FROM   THE  LIBRARY  OF 
REV.   LOUIS    FITZGERALD    BENSON.  D.  D. 

BEQUEATHED   BY   HIM   TO 

THE   LIBRARY  OF 

PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


Sectin,  /CfOG 


SOME    aspects!  .APR    ?    1932 
OF  ^^-'DfHOf^  o.tVA^ 


W^ 


THE   RELIGIOUS   LIFE: 


OF 


NEW    ENGLAND 


SPECIAL  REFERENCE   TO  CONGREGATIONALISTS. 


lectures; 

Delivered  on  the  Carew  Foundation  before  Hartford 
Theological  Seminary  in  1896. 

BY  yy 

GEORGE   LEON    WALKER,  D.D. 


SILVER,  BURDETT   AND    COMPANY. 

New  York  .  .  .  BOSTON  .  .  .  Chicago. 
1897. 


Copyright,  1897, 
By  Silver,  Burdett  and  Company. 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE. 


The  ecclesiastical  story  of  New  England  has  often 
been  told,  but  with  primary  reference  to  its  external, 
institutional,  and  political  aspects.  The  religious 
life  itself  —  its  dominating  motives,  its  character- 
izing experiences,  its  manifestations  of  spiritual 
power  in  the  careers  of  the  men  and  women  of  the 
nine  generations  that  have  dwelt  upon  New  England 
soil  since  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  —  has  been 
largely  neglected.  The  writer  has  long  cherished  a 
desire  to  treat  this  theme  with  some  degree  of  full- 
ness, proportionate  to  what  he  deems  its  importance. 
But  the  limitations  of  an  engrossing  profession,  and 
the  disabilities  consequent  upon  ill  health,  have  pre- 
vented the  accomplishment  of  liis  design.  Yet  the 
wish  has  been  strong  within  him ;  and,  being  invited 
by  the  Trustees  of  Hartford  Theological  Seminary 
to  deliver  the  "  Carew  Lectures"  for  1896,  he  has 
made  use  of  the  opportunity  thus  afforded  him  to 


PREFACE. 


present  a  rapid  survey  of  a  field  of  investigation 
which  he  would  gladly  have  traversed  in  a  more 
leisurely  and  ample  manner,  had  time  and  strength 
permitted  him. 


Hartfokd,  Conn., 

February  1,  1897. 


CONTENTS, 


I. 

Page 
The  Puritan  Period:  1620-1660 7 

IT. 
The  Puritan  Decline:  1660-1735   .....       43 

TIT. 
The  Great  Awakening  and  its  Sequels  :  1735- 

1790 S3 

IV. 

The  Evangelical  Reawakening:  1790-1859      .     126 

V. 
The  Current  Period  :  1859-1896 164 


THE 


RELIGIOUS  LIFE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND. 


THE   PURITAN   PERIOD. 

The  subject  which  has  been  announced  for  the 
Carew  Course  of  Lectures  this  season  is :  "  Some 
Aspects  of  the  Religious  Life  of  New  England,  with 
Special  Reference  to  Congregationalists."  It  is  hoped 
that  the  topic,  so  stated,  suggests  that  what  is  to  be 
considered  is  not  so  much  the  ecclesiastical  story 
of  religious  things  among  our  forerunners  in  these 
provinces  and  States,  as  it  is  the  religious  life  itself 
regarded  more  particularly  in  its  experimental  and 
interior  aspects.  Of  course  it  will  be  quite  impos- 
sible to  leave  out  of  view  —  indeed,  to  let  pass  with- 
out frequent  mention  —  those  ecclesiastical  arrange- 
ments and  semi-political  measures  which  were  often 
the  expression,  and  to  some  extent  also  the  cause, 
of  the  particular  qualities  of  the  religious  life  asso- 
ciated with  them.  Few  communities  anywhere  have 
been  more  distinctly  or  responsivcly  influenced  in 
the  tone  and  character  of  their  spiritual  experiences 
by  social  conditions  and  by  legal  and  ecclesiastical 


8  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD, 

regulations  in  religious  matters  than  the  communi- 
ties of  New  England.  It  is  impracticable  to  ignore 
or  to  obscure  the  agency  of  these  factors  in  any 
survey  of  the  more  spiritual  phenomena  which  ac- 
companied or,  to  some  degree,  flowed  from  them. 
But,  though  not  to  be  ignored,  these  more  external 
matters  are  only  secondary  in  the  present  design, 
not  alone  because  they  have  —  especially  the  eccle- 
siastical side  of  them  —  been  made,  in  quite  recent 
times  and  by  several  writers,  the  subject  of  a  con- 
sideration so  minute  and  painstaking  as  might  well 
incline  one  to  hesitate  to  traverse  ground  so  care- 
fully surveyed  already;  but  chiefly  because  these 
things,  in  themselves  considered,  save  so  far  as 
they  affect  or  illustrate  the  deeper  things  of  the 
spiritual  life  itself,  are  aside  from  the  immediate 
purpose  of  these  lectures. 

That  purpose  is  to  set  forth,  if  it  may  be,  in  some 
degree  of  clearness,  the  men  and  women  of  different 
periods  of  New  England  story  in  a  way  to  enable 
us  to  see  what  they  thought,  and  especially  what 
they  felt,  about  those  great  problems  of  religious 
experience  which,  in  one  form  or  another,  and  with 
varying  degrees  of  intensity  of  interest,  press  upon 
every  generation  of  our  race.  For  it  is  this,  more 
than  any  matter  of  outward  condition  or  ecclesias- 
tical form,  which  is  the  truest  bond  of  fellowship  and 
acquaintance  between  times  and  men.  If  we  can 
understand  even  a  little  better  than  we  do  the  real 
religious  life  of  our  fathers  and  mothers  of  two,  four, 
six,  and  eight  generations  ago,  we  shall   not  only 


AIM  OF  THESE  LECTURES.  9 

have  gained  some  distinct  accession  of  knowledge 
concerning  them,  but  they  will  become  more  the 
objects  of  a  living  interest  and  of  some  degree  at 
least  of  sympathy,  as  being  in  their  time  and  way 
concerned  about  questions  of  as  vital  importance 
to  ourselves  as  to  them,  and  of  real,  however  some- 
times disregarded,  importance  to  all. 

With  this  preliminary  statement  respecting  the 
general  object  proposed  in  the  lectures  which  are 
to  follow,  the  topic  suggested  for  consideration  on 
this  particular  occasion  is  the  Religious  Life  of 
New  England  in  the  First  or  the  Planting  Period 
of  our  History.  The  period  in  question  may  be 
roughly  estimated  as  from  1620,  the  time  of  the 
arrival  at  Plymouth  of  the  Pilgrim  settlers,  to  about 
1655  or  1660,  —  a  period  substantially  covering  the 
lives,  or  at  least  the  active  lives,  of  the  first  settlers 
of  all  the  early  New  England  colonies. 

One  general  fact  which  confronts  us  on  the  thresli- 
old  of  any  inquiry  into  the  qualities  of  the  religious 
life  of  the  first  generation  or  two  of  New  England's 
progenitors  is,  that  that  life  was  essentially  a  trans- 
plantation into,  and  not  a  new  product  of,  this 
American  soil.  The  founders  of  the  New  England 
colonies  did  not  intend  —  to  use  a  somewhat  hack- 
neyed current  phrase  —  to  institute  any  "  new  depar- 
ture," religiously  speaking,  in  coming  hither.  The 
motive  which  brought  them  here  was  not,  strictly 
speaking,  one  essentially  belonging  to  the  religious 
life.  So  far  as  appears,  all  the  substantial  qualities 
and  experiences  of  that  life  could  have  been  mani- 


10  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

fested  and  enjoyed  —  nay,  for  years  had  been  con- 
spicuously manifested  and  enjoyed — under  social 
and  ecclesiastical  conditions  from  which  neverthe- 
less they  felt  compelled,  for  other  reasons  than 
purely  religious  ones,  to  come  out.  The  fathers  did, 
indeed,  inaugurate  a  new  departure  here  of  wide  and 
far-reaching  significance.  In  its  remoter  conse- 
quences religion  has  doubtless  been  deeply  affected 
by  it.  But  religion  was  not  what  they  intended  to 
modify, — only  the  ecclesiastical  setting  of  religion. 
The  issue  on  which  they,  Pilgrims  and  Puritans 
alike,  left  the  sweet  fields  and  comfortable  homes 
and  settled  ways  of  the  land  of  their  birth  for  this 
raw  wilderness,  was  primarily  an  issue  of  the  politics 
rather  than  of  the  substance  of  the  religious  life. 

To  understand  the  quality  of  that  life,  therefore, 
as  the  New  England  fathers  and  mothers  felt  it, 
thought  of  it,  and  illustrated  it,  we  cannot  hastily 
pick  them  up,  standing  on  this  fresh  soil  of  America 
and  gathered  in  the  little  communities  of  Plymouth, 
the  Bay,  Connecticut,  New  Haven,  or  Rhode  Island 
colonies ;  but  we  must  take  a  glance  at  them  in  their 
English  home,  see  something  of  the  spiritual  causes 
which  made  them  what  they  were,  the  views  of 
religious  truth  they  held  to  be  fundamental,  the  in- 
ward experiences  they  deemed  necessary  and  which 
had  wrought  out  in  them  the  type  of  a  religious  life 
which  they  simply  brought  with  them  over  here,  with 
no  desire  of  changing  it,  and  with  no  expectation  that 
anything  they  were  doing  ever  would  change  it  for 
them  or  for  their  posterity. 


ENGLISH  RELIGIOUS  ANTECEDENTS.       11 

The  great  English  movement  of  the  hundred  years 
previous  to  the  advent  of  the  Pilgrim  and  Puritan 
fathers  to  these  shores,  which  we  call  the  Reforma- 
tion in  England,  was  all  along  closely  connected  with, 
and  sometimes  dominated  by,  political  considerations. 
This,  which  was  in  a  measure  true  of  the  Reforma- 
tion movement  on  the  Continent  among  the  French 
and  German  speaking  nations,  was  in  a  still  more 
emphatic  manner  the  case  on  British  soil.  In  Eng- 
land the  questions  of  national  independence  and  the 
separation  of  the  government  from  foreign  ecclesi- 
astical control  oftentimes  and  for  long  periods 
occupied  the  attention  of  men,  to  the  comparative 
obscuration  of  questions  of  a  more  purely  religious 
character.  Men  of  the  most  opposite  views  of  ec- 
clesiastical polity,  and  the  most  contrary  types  of 
religious  belief  and  behavior,  united  with  one  an- 
other all  through  the  later  days  of  Henry  YIII.  and 
most  of  those  of  Elizabeth,  in  supporting  English 
supremacy  in  Church  and  State  as  against  the 
claims  of  the  Papacy ;  and  it  was  only  as  dominat- 
ing anxiety  about  the  political  situation  gradually 
declined,  through  the  growing  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  the  national  victory  had  been  secured, 
that  the  differences  between  reformers  themselves 
on  ecclesiastical  and  religious  questions  became 
prominent. 

Not,  indeed,  but  that  through  the  whole  period  in 
question  there  was  beneath  all  outward  manifesta- 
tions what  might  be  called  an  undercurrent  of  some- 
what steadily  growing  religious  life.     Ever  since  the 


12  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

days  of  Wycliffe,  —  in  fact,  for  nearly  two  centuries 
before  the  time  we  are  speaking  of,  — a  leaven 
had  been  working  in  English  life  which  witnessed  in 
every  generation  to  the  possession  by  some,  and  in 
the  aggregate  doubtless  by  a  great  many,  of  a  really 
spiritual  conception  of  religious  truth  and  the  life 
which  should  flow  from  it.  Especially  in  the  East 
of  England,  and  among  plain  people  of  farms  and 
hamlets,  this  early  sown  seed  of  reformation-grain 
bore  real,  though  stunted,  harvest.  The  Scriptures 
in  Wycliffe's  and  Tyndale's  translations  had  brought 
the  truths  of  the  Gospel  to  the  acquaintance  of  many 
and  to  the  loving  acceptance  of  not  a  few,  who  were 
thus  preparing  the  way  for  a  fuller  light  and  a  more 
vigorous  religious  life  whenever  opportunity  for  it 
should  arise. 

But  the  great  national  revolt  which  successfully 
asserted  England's  independency  alike  in  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  affairs,  however  prompted  by  political 
considerations  mainly,  could  not  be  without  speedy 
and  profound  spiritual  consequences  to  English 
religion.  For  years  before  the  time  when,  with  the 
destruction  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  in  1588,  the  last 
reasonable  hope  of  ever  reducing  England  again  to 
Papal  control  was  finally  extinguished,  the  Church 
of  that  country  found  itself  in  possession  of  articles 
of  religious  belief  wherein  the  whole  momentous 
transition  from  a  sacerdotal  system  in  which,  as  in 
that  of  Rome,  responsibility  for  a  man's  religious 
life  and  salvation  is  practically  taken  off  him  and 
laid  upon  a  corporate  institution  called  the  Church, 


ENGLISH  RELIGIOUS  ANTECEDENTS.      13 

to  a  view  of  things,  on  the  contrary,  which  lays  that 
responsibility  upon  the  man  himself,  is  plainly  indi- 
cated and  expressed.  No  change  more  momentous 
to  the  religious  life  can  be  imagined  than  that.  And 
it  was  one  by  which  for  more  than  two  generations 
previous  to  the  coming  of  the  New  England  planters 
to  our  soil,  all  classes  alike  of  Protestant  English 
people  —  save  during  the  brief  and  reactionary  reign 
of  Mary  Tudor  —  found  themselves  influenced  and 
well-nigh  dominated.  Religion  had  become  a  per- 
sonal, not  a  corporate,  matter. 

Puritans,  who  felt  bound,  in  spite  of  corruptions 
they  still  discerned  in  a  State  Church,  to  adhere  to 
a  national  Establishment,  and  Separatists,  who  felt 
constrained  to  withdraw  from  such  an  Establisliment, 
were  at  one  in  their  common  recognition  and  experi- 
ence of  the  profound  effect  on  every  serious-minded 
man  of  the  Protestant  principle  of  personal  responsi- 
bility in  religious  matters.  Thought  was  turned  in- 
ward upon  self,  instead  of  outward  upon  ceremonies. 
Relieved  of  the  artificial  burden  of  an  official  system 
which  put  a  successive  range  of  barriers  —  confes- 
sions, penances,  absolutions,  masses,  sacraments  — 
between  the  soul  and  its  Maker,  the  actual  bur- 
den of  sin  and  accountableness,  of  duty  and  danger, 
came  more  and  more  to  be  an  individually  recog- 
nized and  powerfully  felt  factor  in  the  spiritual 
experience. 

This  altered  quality  of  English  religious  life,  which 
naturally  grew  out  of  the  change  from  Romanism  to 
Protestantism,  was  strengthened,  for  the  immediate 


14  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

predecessors  of  the  immigrants  to  this  country  and 
for  themselves,  by  the  peculiar  character  of  the  reli- 
gious instruction,  which  now  for  about  fifty  years  had 
been  increasingly  prominent  in  the  pulpits  and  in 
some  of  the  university  chairs  of  England. 

Whether  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  the  English 
Church,  ratified  in  1563,  and  which  were  essentially 
the  same  as  the  forty-two  Articles  of  the  Edwardean 
episode  of  ten  years  previous,  are  or  are  not  sus- 
ceptible of  an  Arminian  interpretation  has  been  an 
oftentime  debated  question.  But  there  can  be  no 
question  that  speedily  after  their  ratification  by 
royal  authority  a  very  marked  intensification  of  Cal- 
vinistic  opinions  began  to  characterize  the  most 
influential  preaching  and  teaching  of  English  pul- 
pits and  lecture-rooms.  A  main  cause  of  this  change 
was  the  return  to  England  of  a  considerable  body  of 
able  and  learned  men  who  had  been  exiled  during 
the  terrible  five  years  of  the  Marian  period  between 
Edward  and  Elizabeth.  These  men  had  in  their  ex- 
patriation, at  Zurich,  Geneva,  Frankfort,  and  Basel, 
been  received  with  hospitality  by  the  Continental 
reformers,  and  had  come,  many  of  them,  to  sympa- 
thize not  only  with  the  practices  in  church  usage, 
but  with  the  doctrinal  opinions  which  prevalently 
characterized  the  theologians  of  Southwestern  Ger- 
many and  Switzerland.  Men  like  the  two  brothers 
Pilkington,  successively  Masters  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege at  Cambridge,  and  Roger  Kelke,  Master  of 
Magdalen,  brought  back  with  them  not  only  a  spirit 
of  opposition  to  "  ceremonies  "  as  pronounced  almost 


INFLUENCE   OF  CALVINISM.  15 

as  that  of  any  Separatist,  but  a  Calvinism  as  austere 
as  Calvin's. 

But  the  most  potent  influence  which  molded  the 
preaching  of  the  generation  of  religious  instructors 
with  whom  our  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  ancestors  were 
most  closely  associated,  and  which  had  therefore 
most  agency  in  molding  the  type  of  their  religious 
experience,  emanated  probably  from  two  quite  differ- 
ent men ;  —  one,  the  occupant  of  a  professor's  chair 
at  Cambridge,  where,  as  Lady  Margaret  Professor 
of  Divinity,  Thomas  Cartwright  taught  both  the 
polity  and  doctrine  of  Geneva,  profoundly  influenc- 
ing the  younger  and  rising  class  of  university  men  ; 
the  other,  an  impassioned,  physically  deformed,  but 
logical,  powerful,  and  spiritual  preacher  in  the  same 
university,  William  Perkins,  whose  strenuous,  search- 
ing, and  ultra-Calvinistic  discourses  left  such  inef- 
faceable impressions  on  several  of  our  ablest  Xew 
England  ministers  of  the  first  generation  that  they 
have  been  made  the  subject  of  distinct  biographic 
record.  And  even  where,  as  in  the  case  of  Dr. 
Whitgift,  —  successively  Lady  Margaret  and  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity,  Master  of  Trinity,  and  Vice- 
chancellor  of  Cambridge  University,  —  no  sympathy 
with  non-conformity  was  found,  there  was  often  a 
high  degree  of  accordancy  with  the  Continental 
divines  of  the  high-Calvinist  type  in  matters  of 
theology.  It  was  in  1595  that  what  are  known  as 
the  Lambeth  Articles  —  so  called  from  the  place  of 
their  subscription  at  the  palace  of  that  name  in  Lon- 
don, and  beyond  comparison  the  most  vigorous  sym- 


16  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

bol  of  Calvinism  ever  framed  as  an  expression  of 
English-speaking  faith  —  were  approved  by  no  less  a 
representative  of  the  whole  English  Church  than 
Archbishop  Whitgift  himself,  then  elevated  to  the 
See  of  Canterbury. 

The  prevailing  type  of  doctrine,  therefore,  in  all 
Puritan  as  well  as  in  Separatist  circles  was  strenu- 
ously, not  to  say  severely,  Calvinistic.  John  Robin- 
son, reckoned  in  many  ways  a  liberal  and  tolerant 
man  and  preacher,  was  in  1619,  at  his  place  of  exile 
in  Holland,  put  forth  as  the  defender  of  the  decrees 
of  the  Synod  of  Dort,  then  just  promulgated,  against 
animadversions  upon  them  by  Episcopius,  the  distin- 
guished Arminian  Leyden  professor. 

Already,  years  before  they  came  here,  the  chief 
pastors  of  these  New  England  churches  —  Cotton, 
Hooker,  Shepherd,  Mather  —  had  been  known  as  pro- 
nounced, not  to  say  extreme,  Calvinists.  Many  of 
their  books,  subsequently  published,  are  made  up  of 
discourses  first  preached  to  congregations  in  England, 
—  as  Cotton's  at  Boston,  in  Lincolnshire,  and  Hooker's 
at  Chelmsford.  The  trend  and  prevalent  topic  of 
preaching  in  Puritan  circles  generally  is  well  indi- 
cated in  the  attempts  vainly  made  by  the  king  and 
the  anti-Puritan  church  dignitaries  in  England  to 
suppress  what  they  accounted  an  inordinate  dealing 
with  the  abstruser  and  darker  problems  of  divinity. 
Already,  in  1622,  some  four  years  before  Mr.  Hooker's 
entrance  on  his  Chelmsford  Lectureship,  James  I. 
issued  injunctions  to  the  clergy  through  Archbishop 
Abbot,  forbidding  any  one  of  them  under  the  stand- 


CALVINISTIC  PREACHING.  17 

ing  of  "  a  bishop  or  a  dean  to  presume  to  preach  in 
any  popular  auditory  on  the  deep  points  of  predes- 
tination, election,  reprobation ;  or  of  the  univer- 
sality, efficacy,  resistibility,  or  irresistibility  of  God's 
grace." 

This  was  a  blow  at  a  general  feature  of  Puritan 
preaching.  Its  insufficient  result  may  be  judged, 
however,  by  the  fact  that,  in  1628,  Charles  I.  felt 
constrained  to  follow  up  his  father's  plainly  disre- 
garded inhibition  by  another,  commanding  all  preach- 
ers to  avoid  any  discussion  in  the  pulpit  of  any 
religious  opinions  which  were  not  justified  by,  or 
which  should  seem  to  imply  departure  from,  the 
"  literal  and  grammatical  sense  "  of  the  Articles  of 
the  Church. 

"When,  therefore,  the  New  England  fathers  and 
mothers  are  found  standing  on  this  shore  of  the 
untraversed  continent,  undertaking  here  to  plant 
new  towns  and  colonies,  and  to  extend  the  boun- 
daries of  a  Christian  civilization,  we  must  not 
imagine  too  much  of  a  break  with  things  of  the 
past.  If  antecedent  convictions  on  the  part  of  a 
comparative  few,  and  the  force  of  circumstances  on 
the  part  of  a  far  greater  number,  did  lead  them  to 
strike  out  a  new  theory  in  ecclesiastical  affairs,  and 
to  some  extent  in  political  matters,  their  religious 
convictions  and  their  religious  life  were,  neverthe- 
less, altogether  homogeneous  with  that  of  a  mul- 
titude of  English  men  and  women  of  their  time  at 
home.  These,  remaining  behind,  held  by  ties  of 
familv,  of  business,  and  all  the  hundred-fold  bonds 


18  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

which  fasten  men  to  native  land,  were,  not  less  than 
the  voluntary  exiles  to  this  soil,  true  offspring  of  the 
Reformation  movement ;  had  drunk  deep  into  its  pro- 
founder  spiritual  springs;  loved  the  stronger  and 
abstruser  of  its  doctrines ;  and,  though  destined  still 
to  pass  their  days  in  the  land  of  their  birth,  in  com- 
munion with,  and  in  more  or  less  of  sympathy  with, 
the  National  Church,  or  to  endure  hardness  and 
tribulation  by  separation  from  it,  were,  nevertheless, 
at  one  in  heart  and  in  general  type  of  religious  life 
and  experience  with  Pilgrims  and  Puritans  on  these 
American  shores.  Religion  for  them  all  meant  the 
same  thing. 

What,  then,  looking  now  somewhat  more  nar- 
rowly at  the  matter,  were  some  of  the  characteristics 
of  that  type  of  religious  life  brought  with  them  by 
New  England's  progenitors  to  this  land,  and  exem- 
plified by  the  first  generation  or  two  in  these  new 
plantations  in  the  wilderness  ? 

One  feature  of  that  religious  life  was  its  profound 
sense  of  the  Divine  Sovereignty.  The  aspect  in 
whicli  God  was  conceived  of  was  dominantly  that 
of  absolute  and  irresistible  authority.  The  will  of 
God  was  not  only  the  ultimate  cause  of  all  physical 
and  moral  events,  but  was  the  foundation  of  morality 
itself.  Things  were  not  right  or  wrong  by  any  in- 
herent or  necessary  character  in  themselves  ;  they 
were  so  because  made  so  by  the  fiats  of  an  infinite 
Ruler. 

John  Norton,  successively  minister  of  the  church 
of  Ipswich,  and  of  the  First  Church  of  Boston,  thus 


THE  DIVINE  SOVEREIGNTY.  19 

expresses  this  belief,  in  his  "  Orthodox  Evangelist,"  ^ 
—  a  book  designed,  as  its  titlepage  tells  us,  as  a 
"  help  for  the  Begetting  and  Establishing  of  the 
Faith  which  is  in  Jesus  "  :  — 

*'God  doth  not  will  things,  because  they  are  just; 
but  things  are  therefore  just,  because  God  so  willeth 
them.  .  .  .  What  reasonable  man  but  will  yeild  that 
the  being  of  the  Moral  Law  hath  no  necessary  connex- 
ion with  the  Being  of  God?  .  .  .  That  the  actions  of 
men,  not  conformable  to  this  Law,  should  be  sin  :  that 
death  should  be  the  punishment  of  sin  .  .  .  these  are 
the  constitutions  of  God,  proceeding  from  him,  not  by 
way  of  necessity  of  nature,  but  freely,  as  effects  and 
products  of  his  Eternal  good  pleasure." 

This  sovereignty  of  God,  so  antecedent  to  and 
supreme  over  even  moral  distinctions,  reached  irre- 
sistibly to  all  events,  however  great,  however  minute. 
Nothing  could  escape  its  grasp  and  its  effectual  con- 
trol. Not  the  airiest  imagination,  not  the  seemingly 
freest  choice,  but  was  firm-held  in  the  vice-like 
clutch  of  a  determinative  purpose  of  the  Most  High. 
Of  course  there  was  endeavor  to  save  the  divine 
character  in  reference  to  the  origin  and  continual 
existence  of  sin.  Very  acute  are  the  distinctions  of 
John  Norton,  chief  dialectician  among  the  New  Eng- 
land ministers  of  the  first  generation,  between  the 
operations  of  God's  will  as  a  "  first  Cause  "  and  the 
operations  of  man's  will  as  a  "  second  Cause."  But 
what   did   such   attempted  distinctions  amount  to, 

1  pp.  147,  149. 


20  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD, 

when  the  reader  of  his  hair-splitting  explanations 
read  also  such  plain  allegations  as  these :  ^  — 

"  He  [God]  so  determineth  the  Will,  as  the  Will  de- 
termineth  it  self.  God  so  determineth  the  Will,  as 
a  first  free  Agent,  as  that  the  Will  determineth  it  self 
as  a  second  free  Agent.  .  .  .  The  external,  transient, 
efficacious  Motion  of  God  upon  the  Will,  determineth 
the  will  with  a  real  determination  :  the  Will  so  moved, 
moveth  it  self  with  a  real,  and  formal  determination." 

Plain  must  it  be  that,  so  far  as  conceptions  of  the 
divine  sovereignty  like  these  prevailed  to  influence 
the  character  of  the  religious  life  begotten  in  con- 
nection with  them  —  and  they  prevailed  very  largely 
in  the  theory  of  religion,  certainly —  they  must  have 
shed  over  that  life  an  aspect  of  fatalism,  and  have 
presented  the  truth  of  the  divine  sovereignty  in 
one  of  its  most  perplexing  and  depressing  possible 
aspects. 

That  they  did  not  avail  more  powerfully  to  deject 
and  sadden  the  spirits  of  the  time  we  must  mainly 
ascribe  to  two  causes.  First,  to  that  happy  fact, 
constantly  to  be  borne  in  mind  respecting  many 
theories  of  devout  men  and  women,  that  the  practical 
issue  of  extreme  doctrines  entertained  is  not  always, 
or  even  pervasively,  what  it  logically  ought  to  be. 
There  is  a  reserve  of  sound,  saving  sense  and  feeling 
in  human  nature  which  often  rescues  life  and  behav- 
ior from  the  consequences  of  the  most  positively 
accepted  intellectual  conclusions. 

1  Orthodox  Evangelist,  pp.  114,  115. 


EFFECT  OF  THE  DOCTRINE,  21 

And  secondly^  there  was  an  immense  offset  to  any 
inordinately  depressing  conceptions  of  divine  sov- 
ereignty, as  there  always  is  when  a  comfortable 
assurance  is  entertained  at  the  same  time  that  that 
sovereignty  is  enlisted  in  one's  own  behalf  or  is 
pledged  to  the  success  of  an  enterprise  in  which 
one  is  engaged.  This  personal  assurance  in  their 
own  individual  cases,  it  is  to  be  believed,  these  good 
men  and  women  very  generally  had.  Certainly,  the 
duty  of  such  assurance  was  inculcated  by  their  reli- 
gious teachers  as  an  almost  indispensable  associate  or 
result  of  saving  faith  ;  if  not,  indeed,  —  as  was  the 
case  with  many  of  the  Continental  and  English  re- 
formers, —  as  of  the  very  essence  of  faith  itself.  Nor 
was  the  confidence  in  God's  enlistment  on  the  side  of 
the  New  England  enterprise  one  which  any  common 
measure  of  adversity  could  at  all  disturb.  That  was 
a  thing  they  did  not  themselves  question ;  and  tliey 
suffered  no  one  else  over  whom  they  had  moral  or 
physical  control  to  question  it  either.  Few  offenses 
awoke  quicker  indignation  or  brought  quicker  judg- 
ment than  the  offense  of  speaking  against,  or  sending 
home  to  England  letters  against,  the  prospects  of  the 
New  England  colonial  enterprise.  Every  one  of  the 
colonies  affords  examples  of  the  wrath  of  the  people 
at  speeches  thus  uttered,  or  reports  forwarded  to 
England,  adverse  to  the  full  assurances  entertained 
of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  success.  It  was  in  this 
spirit  that  they  appropriated  and  cheerily  sung,  amid 
the  log-huts  of  their  scattered  villages,  their  rude 
renderino;  of  the  strong  old  Hebrew  strains :  — 


22  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

"He  said  I'll  give  thee  Canaan's  land, 
by  lot  heirs  to  be  there, 
When  few,  yea  very  few  in  count, 
and  strangers  in  't  they  were. 

"  He  suffered  none  to  do  them  wrong, 
yea,  Kings  for  them  checked  he; 
Touch  ye  not  mine  anointed  ones, 
my  prophets  harm  not  ye. 

"He  also  thence  did  bring  them  forth, 
with  silver  and  with  gold, 
And  there  was  not  among  their  tribes 
a  feeble  person  told. 

"He  of  the  heathen  people  did 
the  land  on  them  bestow, 
The  labor  of  the  people  they 
inherited  also." 

Still,  granting  all  the  sustaining  power  there 
always  is  in  the  persuasion  that  Providence  is  on 
our  side,  and  finding  in  it  not  only  a  comforting  fact 
generally  but  a  specially  explanatory  and  comforting 
fact  in  relation  to  the  particular  generation  of  peo- 
ple we  are  speaking  of,  there  remains,  nevertheless, 
the  incontestible  certainty  that  there  must  have 
brooded  over  those  settlements  in  the  wilderness  a 
conception  of  the  Sovereignty  they  were  under,  which, 
if  not  depressing,  was  at  least  majestic  and  awe- 
inspiring  in  its  grandeur  and  sublimity. 

Another  conception  powerfully  affecting  the  reli- 
gious life  of  the  period  under  consideration  was  the 
view  almost  universally  inculcated  and,  theoretically 
at  least,  as  universally  entertained,  of  man's  help- 


HUMAN  HELPLESSNESS.  23 

lessness.  Man  was  helpless,  indeed,  in  all  moral 
matters ;  but  he  was  especially  helpless  in  that 
transcendently  important  but  infinitely  necessary 
business  of  a  regenerative  change  of  heart.  The 
passivity  of  the  soul  in  regeneration  was  a  gener- 
ally affirmed  doctrine  with  the  divines  of  the  Refor- 
mation. Here  in  New  England,  John  Norton  called 
it^  "a  fundamentall  truth"  of  the  Gospel. 

But  how  it  was  practically  inculcated,  we  may  per- 
haps see  in  the  most  lively  way  by  listening  to  words 
of  less  didactic  setters-forth  of  the  matter,  —  words 
of  men  distinguished  rather  as  preachers  than  as 
theologians.  Speaking  of  the  impossibility  of  a 
man's  doing  anything  toward  his  own  salvation, 
Thomas  Shepherd  says  ^ :  — 

"  Oh  thou  mayest  wish  and  desire  to  come  out  some- 
time, but  canst  not  put  strength  to  thy  desire,  nor 
indure  to  doe  it.  Thou  mayest  hang  down  thy  head 
like  a  Bulrush  for  sin,  but  thou  canst  not  repent  of  sin; 
thou  mayest  presume,  but  thou  canst  not  beleeve  ;  thou 
ma^^est  come  half  way,  and  forsake  some  sins,  but  not 
all  sins ;  thou  mayest  come  &  knock  at  heaven  gate, 
as  the  foolish  virgins  did,  but  not  enter  in  and  passe 
through  the  gate;  thou  mayest  see  the  land  of  Canaan^ 
&  take  much  pain  to  goe  into  Ccman^  and  mayest  tast 
of  the  bunches  of  Grapes  of  that  good  land,  but  never 
enter  into  Canaan.,  into  Heaven,  but  thou  liest  bound 
hand  and  foot  in  this  woful  estate,  and  here  thou  must 


1  Orthodox  Evangelist,  p.  281. 

2  Sincere  Convert  (1646),  p.  71. 


24  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD, 

lie  and  rot  like  a  dead  carkasse  in  his  grave,  untill  the 
Lord  come  and  rowle  away  the  stone,  and  bid  thee  come 
out  and  live." 

So  Thomas  Hooker :  ^  — 

*'I  expresse  it  thus,  look  as  it  is  with  the  wheele  of  a 
clock,  or  the  wheele  of  a  lack  that  is  turned  aside,  and 
by  some  contrary  poyse  set  the  wrong  way.  He  now 
that  will  set  this  wheele  right,  must  take  away  the  con- 
trary poyse,  and  then  put  the  wheele  the  right  way  ;  and 
yet  the  wheele  doth  not  goe  all  this  while  of  it  selfe,  but 
first  there  is  a  stopping  of  the  wheele,  and  a  taking  away 
of  the  poyse  ;  and  secondly  the  wheele  must  be  turned 
the  right  way,  and  all  this  while  the  wheele  is  only  a  suf- 
ferer :  so  it  is  with  the  soule  of  a  man  .  .  .  God  by  a 
holy  kind  of  violence,  rendeth  the  soule  of  a  poore  sin- 
ner, and  withall  by  his  almighty  power,  stops  the  force 
of  a  mans  corruptions,  and  makes  the  soule  teachable, 
and  framable  to  the  will  of  God  :  it  makes  it  to  lie  levell, 
and  to  be  at  Gods  comuiand :  and  this  is  done  by  a  holy 
kind  of  violence." 

Or  again,  from  the  same  writer  2  :  — 

'^This  union  that  is  betwene  the  soule  and  its  cor- 
ruptions is  marvellous  strong  and  firme,  nay  so  strong 
and  firme  that  there  is  no  meanes  under  heaven,  no 
creature  in  the  world  that  is  able  to  breake  this  union, 
and  dissolve  this  combination  that  is  betweene  sinne  and 
the  soule,  unless  the  Lord  by  his  Almighty  power  come 
and  break  this  concord  and  conspiracy.  ...  As  it  is 
with  the  body  of  a  man,  if  there  were  a  great  and  old 

1  Preparing  for  Christ  (1638),  pp.  24-26. 

2  Ibid.  (1638),  pp.  138-140. 


HUMAN  HELPLESSNESS.  25 

distemper  in  a  mans  stomacke,  if  a  man  should  put  a 
rich  doublet  upon  him  aud  lay  him  in  a  Featherbed,  and 
use  all  other  outward  meanes,  this  would  doe  him  noe 
good.  .  .  .  lust  so  it  is  with  the  soule  of  a  man  ;  a 
mans  heart  will  have  his  sinne;  there  is  an  inward 
combination  betweene  the  soule  and  sinne ;  now  all 
meanes,  as  the  Word,  and  the  like  is  outward,  and  can 
doe  no  good  in  this  kind ;  they  cannot  break  the  union 
betweene  a  mans  heart  and  his  corruptions  .  .  .  unlesse 
the  Lord  by  his  Almighty  power  and  infinite  wisedom 
make  a  separation  betweene  sinne  and  the  soule,  and 
dissolve  this  union." 

This  the  Lord  occasionally  did.  Hopefully  He  had 
done  it,  indeed,  for  most  of  those  who  had  been  gath- 
ered in  this  wilderness ;  but  the  proportion  of  men 
for  whom  He  did  it  was  relatively  small,  as  Thomas 
Shepherd  is  strenuous  in  reminding  his  trembling, 
unconverted  hearers  ^ :  — 

"  Now  doe  not  thou  shift  it  from  thy  selfe,  and  say, 
God  is  merclfull.  True,  but  it  is  to  very  feiL\  as  shall  bee 
proved.  'Tis  a  thousand  to  one  if  ever  thou  bee  one 
of  that  small  number  whom  God  hath  picked  out  to 
escape  this  wrath  to  come." 

But  even  when  God  did  sovereignly  and  graciously 
interpose  to  afford  the  indispensable  aid,  the  general 
belief  of  the  period,  and  indeed  tlie  general  experi- 
ence of  the  time,  made  the  process  by  which  a  com- 
fortable hope  of  salvation  was  arrived  at  an  arduous 
and  protractedly  painful  one.     Tlie  religious  life  of 

1  Sincere  Convert,  p,  98. 


26  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

the  time  was  keyed  to  the  expectation  of  such  ago- 
nizing experiences,  and  could  hardly  credit  the  gen- 
uineness of  any  other. 

Thomas  Shepherd  bluntly  declares  ^ :  — - 

"  lesus  Christ  is  not  got  with  a  wet  finger.  It  is  not 
wishing  and  desiring  to  be  saved,  will  bring  men  to 
heaven  ;  hells  mouth  is  full  of  good  wishes.  It  is  not 
shedding  a  teare  at  a  Sermon  or  blubbering  now  and  then 
in  a  corner,  and  saying  over  thy  prayers,  and  crying  God 
mercy  for  thy  sins,  will  save  thee.  It  is  not  Lord  have 
mercy  ujwn  us,  will  doe  thee  good.  It  is  not  comming 
constantly  to  Church  ;  these  are  easie  matters.  But  it  is 
a  tough  work,  a  wonderfull  hard  matter  to  bee  saved." 

The  necessity  of  this  careful,  protracted  antece- 
dent process,  argued  at  length  in  John  Norton's 
treatise,  already  referred  to,  is  well  intimated  in  the 
heading  of  its  sixth  chapter :  — 

"  There  are  certain  Preparatory  works  coming  between 
the  carnal  rest  of  the  soul  in  the  state  of  sin,  and  effect- 
ual vocation  ;  Or,  Christ  in  his  ordinary  Dispensation  of 
the  Gospel,  calleth  not  sinners,  as  sinners,  but  such  sin- 
ners ;  i.  e.  qualified  sinners,  immediately  to  believe." 

This  qualifying  of  sinners,  as  Mr.  Norton  phrases 
it,  by  antecedent  experiences  of  minutely  analyzed 
and  carefully  discriminated  character,  was  generally 
insisted  on  by  all  preachers  of  the  period,  but  per- 
haps found  its  most  developed  expression  in  the 
sermons  and  writings  of  that  most  powerful  of  them 
all  in  the  cogency  and  acuteness  of  his  pulpit  deliv- 

1  Sincere  Convert,  p.  150. 


DIFFICULTY  OF  CONVERSION.  27 

erances  —  Thomas  Hooker.  Mr.  Hooker  has  whole 
volumes  on  these  experiences  of  the  soul  in  process 
of  conversion,  but  antecedent  to  conversion.  They 
were  not  the  product  of  his  New  England  ministry 
only.  He  preached  them  in  his  Esher  and  Chelms- 
ford parislies  before  he  came  here,  and  nothing  in 
the  way  of  spiritual  analysis  ever  surpassed  their 
anatomizing  of  the  moral  phenomena  so  generally  re- 
garded as  indispensable  to  conversion.  He  brought 
to  this  work  a  subtlety  of  perception,  a  power  of 
spiritual  vivisection,  an  amplitude  and  variousness 
of  illustration,  and  an  energy  and  incisiveness  of 
expression  which  were  absolutely  wonderful. 

Mr.  Hooker's  emphasis  upon  the  nature  and  neces- 
sity of  this  preparatory  work  may  have  been  even 
then  regarded  as  somewhat  excessive.  We  have  cer- 
tainly the  reported  remark  ^  made  to  him  by  shrewd 
Nathaniel  Ward,  of  Ipswich,  author  of  the  "  Simple 
Cobbler  of  Agawam  " :  "  Mr.  Hooker,  you  make  as 
good  Christians  before  men  are  in  Christ  as  ever  they 
are  after ;  would  I  were  but  as  good  a  Christian  now 
as  you  make  men  while  they  are  but  preparing  for 
Christ." 

Certainly,  on  one  other  point,  elaborately  insisted 
on  by  Mr.  Hooker,  and  inculcated  also  by  his  son-in- 
law,  Thomas  Shepherd,  he  was  not  supported  by  tlie 
general  convictions  of  his  ministerial  cotemporaries. 
His  own  intense  experiences  and  his  impassioned, 
however  powerful,  nature  led  him  to  promulgate  a 
doctrine  which,  a  hundred  years  later,  was  similarly 

1  Giles  Firmin's  Real  Christian  (1670),  p.  19. 


28  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

promulgated  by  a  man  of  somewhat  kindred  intel- 
lectual make,  and  to  which  there  will  be  occasion  in 
a  later  lecture  again  to  refer,  —  the  doctrine  of  the 
necessity  of  such  an  unconditional  submission  of  the 
will  to  God  as  carries  with  it  a  willingness  to  be  lost. 
This  doctrine,  which  has  passed  into  New  England 
theological  history  as  a  tenet  of  Hopkinsianism,  was, 
a  century  before  Hopkins,  as  clearly  and  cogently 
and  in  far  more  thrilling  rhetoric  —  stated,  ar- 
gued, and  illustrated  by  Mr.  Hooker.^  It  added, 
there  can  be  no  question  —  for  testimony  to  this  fact 
remains  —  as  it  always  does,  a  new  difficulty  and 
terror  to  the  processes  of  an  inquiring  spirit  tread- 
ing the  anxious  road  of  conviction  and  convei'sion. 
Mr.  Hooker's  view,  in  this  particular,  was  disavowed 

^  Cotton  Mather  (following  his  father,  Increase,  in  the  latter's 
prefatory  letter  to  Solomon  Stoddard's  Guide  to  Christ)  attempts  to 
defend  Mr.  Hooker  from  the  imputation  of  teaching  this  doctrine,  on 
the  ground,  as  he  sets  forth  in  Magnalia  i.  315,  that  the  publication 
of  Mr.  Hooker's  writings  was  to  a  great  extent  "  without  his  consent 
or  knowledge;  whereby  his  notions  came  to  be  deformedly  repre- 
sented." The  defense  is  well  meant,  but  it  is  idle.  The  Hopkinsian 
doctrine  of  contentment  in  being  damned  was  inculcated  by  Hooker 
and  Shepherd  with  the  utmost  distinctness.  It  is  not  by  any  suppo- 
sition of  incorrect  short-hand  reporting  that  the  doctrine  can  be  got 
out  of  Hooker's  Soriles  Humiliation  or  Shepherd's  Sound  Beleever. 
The  doctrine  is  logically  woven  into  the  texture  of  both  treatises.  It 
appears  and  reappears  in  both  of  them.  It  is  prepared  for,  led  up  to, 
stated,  enforced,  and  objections  to  it  answered.  There  is  no  acci- 
dental and  inconsiderate  slipping  into  its  utterance.  It  is  accepted 
with  full  intelligence  and  with  full  recognition  of  its  obnoxiousness 
and  its  difficulty  to  the  average  experience.  Pages  could  be  quoted 
from  both  authors  in  support  of  these  statements,  but  it  is  sufficient 
here  to  refer  to  Hooker's  Souks  Humiliation  (1638),  pp.  98-115,  and 
to  Shepherd's  Sound  Beleever  (1645),  pp.  141-155. 


MINUTENESS  OF  INTROSPECTION.          29 

by  John  Norton  in  the  "  Orthodox  Evangelist,"  ^  and 
is  not  to  be  found  in  any  utterance  of  John  Cotton ; 
while  it  was  made  —  in  1670  indeed,  twenty-three 
years  after  Mr.  Hooker's  death  —  a  main  point  of 
opposition,  in  Giles  Firmin's  "  Real  Christian,"  2  to 
what  that  writer  deemed  the  difficulty  enhancing 
teachings  of  both  Hooker  and  Shepherd  in  the  mat- 
ter of  the  conversion  of  men  to  Christ. 

But,  whatever  minor  notes  of  dissent  from  par- 
ticular extreme  views  presented  by  any  New  England 
divine  may  be  discovered,  the  general  character  of 
religious  instruction  in  the  period  we  are  considering 
could  not  but  result  in  a  type  of  the  religious  life 
marked  by  the  most  minute  and  rigorous  introspec- 
tion. Both  in  the  pulpit  and  in  the  closet,  as  in- 
quiries preliminary  to  union  with  one  of  these 
wilderness  churches,  or  as  searching  out  ground  of 
comfort  in  the  solitary  soul,  the  most  merciless  lay- 
ing bare  of  personal  experience  was  expected  and 
demanded.  Especially  all  the  evasions  and  windings 
of  the  human  spirit  in  recoil  from  the  stern  presen- 
tations made  of  the  sovereignty  and  righteousness  of 
God,  were  followed  with  microscopic  acuteness  and 
pitilessness  of  exposure.  Holding  to  the  immense 
difficulty  of  saving  conversion,  the  vast  liability  to 
deception  about  it,  together  with  the  infinite  misery 
of  failure  in  the  enterprise,  the  whole  process  was 
tried  as  by  fire. 

These  spiritual  experiences  were  publicly  disclosed 
to  the  church  as  the  basis  of  admission  to  fellowship, 

1  Page  151.  2  Chapters  i.-iv. ;  pp.  1-150. 


30  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

and  as  a  test  by  which  fitness  for  such  fellowship 
should  be  tried.  A  series  of  about  fifty  such  "  Rela- 
tions," as  they  were  called,  remains,  in  the  very  dif- 
ficult handwriting  of  Thomas  Shepherd,  which  were 
presented  by  candidates  for  admission  to  his  own 
church  in  Cambridge,  —  examples,  from  a  quarter  of 
a  page  to  eight  pages  in  length,  of  a  method  of  scru- 
tiny and  revelation  universal  in  the  churches. 

Such  earnest  self-inspection  as  characterized  the 
religious  life  of  this  period  ought,  logically,  one  might 
suppose,  to  have  resulted  in  a  type  of  piety  morbid 
as  well  as  intense  ;  mystic  and  debilitating,  as  well 
as  devout  and  fervent.  That  it  did  not  do  so  to  any 
considerable  extent  was  owing  to  several  mutually 
cooperating  causes. 

One  of  these  is  to  be  found  in  the  essential  sound- 
ness and  healthiness  of  that  English  temperament 
which  our  fathers  and  mothers  inherited,  and  which 
in  some  good  measure  they  transmitted  to  their  pos- 
terity. This  balanced  and  sober  natural  disposition, 
which  characterizes  our  Anglo-Saxon  race,  is  capable 
of  subjection  to  intense  emotions,  for  protracted  peri- 
ods of  time,  without  losing  —  except  in  here  and  there 
individual  instances  —  its  substantially  sane  and  just 
estimate  of  realities  and  its  judicial  self-control. 
Neither  ecstatic  and  passionate  with  the  Gaul  and  the 
Italian,  nor  mystic  and  sentimental  with  the  Ger- 
man, it  remains  relatively  rational  and  equipoised 
under  the  pressure  of  even  the  intensest  political  or 
religious  causes  of  excitement,  and  bears,  without  the 
results  which  often  seem  their  inevitable  logical  con- 


RELIEF  IN  OUTWARD  ACTIVITY.  31 

sequences,  the  impact  on  mind  and  heart  of  beliefs 
or  of  emergencies  that  appear  altogether  suited  to 
drive  men  to  enthusiasm  or  despair. 

Another  correction  of  any  tendency  to  a  morbid 
and  debilitating  result  from  the  introspective  train- 
ing of  our  Puritan  period  of  history  existed  con- 
stantly in  the  absolute  necessity  for  the  most 
strenuous  outward  activity  in  the  labors  of  new- 
settlement  life  in  the  wilderness.  This  necessity 
existed,  of  course,  in  the  conflicts  with  the  rude  and 
gigantic  powers  of  nature  under  the  altered  con- 
ditions of  climate  and  agriculture,  and  commerce 
and  life  generally,  in  this  raw,  new  land. 

But  it  was  not  nature's  oppositions  alone  which 
led  them  outward  from  too  great  concentration  upon 
the  phenomena  of  the  individual  spiritual  life.  The 
world  by  which  they  were  surrounded  was  not  an  in- 
sensate world  merely,  diflBcult  to  subdue  because  of 
its  unplastic  and  intractable  earthiness.  It  was  a 
world  under  the  power  of  malign  and  opposing  spir- 
itual agencies.  Curiously  united,  in  the  minds  of  the 
men  and  women  of  that  generation,  with  the  high 
doctrines  they  entertained  of  the  Divine  Sovereignty 
were  the  conceptions  they  also  held  of  the  pervasive- 
ness and  activity  of  diabolic  agency.  The  power  of 
the  devil  in  this  new  world  was,  after  all,  the  chief 
adverse  power  they  had  to  contend  against.  They 
wrestled  not  so  much  against  flesh  and  blood,  against 
frost  and  storm,  and  drought  and  flood,  as  against 
him  whose  malignant  spirit  these  things  were  largely 
taken  to  represent,  and  whose  stronghold,  tyrannized 


32  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

over  by  him  for  centuries,  they  had  had  the  hardi- 
hood to  invade.  The  solemn  primeval  forests  were 
tenanted  with  spectres,  demons,  and  emissaries  of  the 
evil  one.  Their  trails  and  footprints  infested  every 
pathway  through  darksome  glen  or  over  rocky  hill- 
sides ;  and  every  unusual  accident,  or  perilous  mis- 
adventure, or  misdirection  in  the  tangled  thickets,  or 
loss  or  illness  of  cattle,  could  be  traced  to  their  mali- 
cious mischief.  The  poor  Indians  of  the  native  woods 
were  Satan's  special  slaves  and  victims,  and  efforts 
made  to  convert  them  excited  his  peculiar  ire.  It 
was  to  revenge  these  assaults  upon  his  vassals  and 
his  domain  that  the  crops  of  the  settlers  were  cut  off 
by  frost,  that  fevers  invaded  their  homes,  that  their 
fishing  barks  sank  in  the  turmoiled  waters  of  rivers 
and  the  sea. 

The  shadow  of  this  enmity  of  spiritual  foes  lay  like 
a  cloud  over  the  whole  landscape  of  the  spiritual  life. 
We  get  a  little  glimpse  of  the  intensity  of  its  occa- 
sional gloom,  and  of  the  terrors  which  might  some- 
times be  roused  by  it,  in  the  scenes  which  took  place 
in  connection  with  the  witchcraft  persecutions,  for 
the  most  part  at  a  period  considerably  later  than  the 
epoch  now  spoken  of.  "  For  the  most  part,"  it  is 
remarked,  since  much  earlier  than  the  time  of  what 
we  call  the  Salem  delusion,  even  as  early  as  1648,  in 
Hartford,  six  months  after  Hooker  died,  a  woman 
had  been  hung  for  familiarity  with  the  devil. 

But  all  this  apprehension  of  Satanic  interposition 
in  common  affairs,  if  it  served  no  other  good  purpose, 
gave  an  outward  tendency  to  men's  thoughts  which 


SATANIC  OPPOSITION,  33 

largely  offset  the  influence  of  the  introspective  habi- 
tudes which  were  inculcated  as  so  necessary  to  safety 
in  spiritual  things.  And  it  is  certainly  a  signal  trib- 
ute, alike  to  the  courage  and  the  self-forgetfulness 
of  the  piety  of  our  progenitors,  that,  in  spite  of  what 
they  deemed  the  peculiar  dangers  of  the  enterprise, 
and  the  special  oppositions  of  Satan  engendered  by 
it,  such  earnest  and  successful  endeavors  to  Chris- 
tianize the  Indians  —  that  is,  to  rescue  them  from 
the  direct  and  exclusive  control  of  Satan  —  were 
made  by  the  early  churches  of  New  England. 

But  more  influential  doubtless  than  any  other 
cause  in  steadying,  and,  on  the  whole,  reasonably 
guiding  the  course  of  religious  conduct  in  the  Puri- 
tan period,  —  indeed,  deserving  to  be  set  by  itself  as 
one  distinct  feature  of  the  religious  life  of  the  time,  — 
was  the  place  accorded  in  men's  belief  and  behavior 
to  the  authority  and  to  the  universal  applicability  of 
Scripture. 

The  Reformation  recoil  from  the  centralization  of 
authority  in  the  priesthood  and  the  Church  had  re- 
sulted in  the  enthronement  of  the  printed  Scriptures 
in  the  seat  of  absolute  supremacy.  Far  more  than 
any  previous  epoch  of  Christian  history  had  ever  wit- 
nessed, the  volume  called  the  "  Word  of  God  "  was 
now  made  the  final  arbiter  of  doctrine  and  of  con- 
duct. And  it  was  not  only  finally  authoritative,  but 
it  was  universally  applicable  also.  Equally,  in  all 
portions,  it  was  the  explicit  utterance  of  the  infinite 
Wisdom  and  Will ;  and  a  text  taken  from  it  any- 
where, which  seemed  to  fit  appropriately  any  given 


34  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD, 

question  or  situation,  was  viewed  as  doubtless  the 
decisive  utterance  of  the  mind  of  God  concerning  it. 
The  New  Haven  congregation  certainly,  and  other 
congregations  probably,  rose  and  remained  uncovered 
while  the  pastor  solemnly  pronounced  the  text  of  his 
discourse,  having  in  those  syllables  listened  to  the 
immediate  accents  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  That  colony 
expUcitly  adopted  the  Scriptures  as  "  a  perfect  rule  " 
of  government  in  civil  as  well  as  in  religious  affairs ; 
and  in  all  the  colonies  an  appeal  to  Scripture  was 
held  valid  in  support  or  in  contravention  of  every 
proposed  item  of  legislative  enactment  or  judicial 
procedure. 

Held  thus  as  the  regulative  guide  in  all  civil  con- 
cerns, the  Scripture  was  of  course  supreme  and  un- 
questionable in  spiritual  matters.  To  its  last  syllable 
of  history  or  of  pedigree  it  was  vitally  pregnant  with 
deepest  religious  meaning.  All  there  was  of  God- 
head crowded  itself  into  each  utterance  of  prophecy, 
narrative,  or  proverb.  Isaiah  or  Ecclesiastes,  Gene- 
sis or  Solomon's  Song,  were  weighted  down  with 
living  present  meaning,  suited  to  men  in  all  the 
passing  exigencies  of  those  troubled  days. 

Indeed,  it  may  be  said  by  way  of  digression,  there 
is  something  exceedingly  interesting  and  almost 
pathetic  in  the  special  feeling  toward  this  last-named 
book  —  the  Jewish  Love  Song  — which  the  Rabbis 
of  the  Hebrew  Synagogue  prohibited  the  reading  of 
by  their  neophytes  till  they  were  past  forty  years  of 
age. 

These  good  men  and  women  in  this  hard  wilder- 


REVERENCE  FOR   SCRIPTURE.  35 

ness,  like  their  harassed  and  troubled  religious 
brethren  and  sisters  in  English  trials  at  home, 
found  in  the  luxurious  imagery,  the  passionate 
language,  and  the  joyous  and  loving  utterances  of 
this  book  attributed  to  Solomon,  what  was  undoubt- 
edly a  most  welcome  contrast  to  the  hard  narrow- 
ness of  their  ordinary  surroundings  and  their  common 
thought.  With  perfect  purity  and  simplicity  of  feel- 
ing they  seized  upon  it,  spiritualized  it,  adopted  it, 
and  lived  in  it,  as  a  delightsome  pleasure  ground  of 
the  soul,  of  which  Christ  was  the  central  figure,  and 
of  which  the  Church's  love  to  Christ  and  his  love  to 
the  Church  was  the  perpetual  theme.  So  that,  in  the 
midst  of  this  howling  wilderness  and  all  the  strenu- 
ous hardships  of  their  days,  few  books  of  Scripture 
were  more  resorted  to  for  texts,  for  sermons,  or  for 
comfort  in  private  devotion  than  this.  It  is  with 
something  of  admiration  as  well  as  wonder  that  we 
picture  them  in  their  rude  sanctuaries,  sitting  sex  by 
sex  apart  on  the  hard  benches,  in  torrid  summer 
heats  or  fireless  winter  colds,  listening  devoutly  and 
fervently  as  their  minister  read :  — 

*' As  the  lily  among  thorns,  so  is  my  love  among  the 
daughters.  As  the  apple-tree  among  the  trees  of  the 
wood  so  is  my  beloved  among  the  sons.  ...  He  brought 
me  to  the  banqueting  house  and  his  banner  over  me  was 
love.  .  .  .  His  left  hand  is  under  m}^  head,  and  his  right 
hand  doth  embrace  me.  I  charge  you,  O  ye  daughters  of 
Jerusalem,  by  the  roes  and  by  the  hinds  of  the  field,  that 
ye  stir  not  up,  nor  awake  my  love,  till  he  please." 


36  THE  PUPdTAN  PERIOD. 

The  generally  accorded  authority  and  fniality 
ascribed  to  the  Scriptures,  however  sometimes  that 
Scripture  was  fancifully  or  extravagantly  inter- 
preted, was,  on  the  whole,  a  very  steadying  and 
controlling  power  in  repressing  individual  enthusi- 
asm and  eccentricity  in  religious  matters.  An  out- 
ward standard,  accessible  to  all  and  familiar  to  all, 
was  close  at  hand  by  which  faith  and  conduct  were  to 
be  tried.  And,  as  long  as  that  standard  remained 
unchallenged  in  its  exclusive  and  solitary  sufficiency, 
no  mere  questions  of  interpretation,  less  or  more 
violent  or  fantastic,  could  very  seriously  disturb  the 
homogeneity  of  faith. 

It  was  for  this  reason,  undoubtedly,  as  being 
only  a  matter  of  Scripture  interpretation  variant 
from  that  of  the  churches  generally,  that  William 
Pynchon's  book  on  the  Atonement  no  more  violently 
moved  the  people  of  the  time  on  its  publication  in 
1650.  Mr.  Pynchon,  the  founder  of  Springfield,  and 
a  merchant  of  high  repute,  wrote  a  book  on  the 
''  Meritorious  Price  of  Christ's  Redemption,"  which 
in  some  of  its  features  anticipated,  by  about  one 
hundred  and  thirty  years,  what,  since  the  days  of 
Jonathan  Edwards  the  younger,  has  been  known  as 
the  New  England  theory  of  the  Atonement. 

It  was  a  book  which  ought  to  have  marked  an 
epoch  in  New  England  theology.  It  did  make 
considerable  stir  among  the  preachers  of  the  time 
and  the  leaders  among  the  legislators.  But  it 
treated  Scripture  as  reverently  as  any  other  volume 
did,  and  hence  did  not  profoundly  disturb  the  gen- 


REVERENCE  FOR   SCRIPTURE.  37 

eral  mind  of  the  people,  or  apparently  enlist  very 
much  of  their  concern.  The  book  appealed  to  Scrip- 
ture ;  and  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  set  John 
Norton  to  reply  to  it  out  of  Scripture.  He  did  so  in 
a  very  elaborate  volume.  The  legislature  also  or- 
dered the  heretical  book  to  be  burned  ;  and  so  the 
incident  closed,  its  only  conspicuous  results  being 
that  it  retarded  for  a  hundred  and  more  years  that 
view  of  the  Atonement  which  has  been  generally 
accepted  for  the  last  three  generations  among  New 
England  churches,  and  that  it  made  Mr.  Pynchon's 
book  so  scarce  that  a  copy  of  it  readily  sells  for 
four  or  five  hundred  dollars. 

But  once  touch  the  authority  of  Scripture,  and 
there  was  another  sort  of  matter  on  hand. 

Yery  interesting  is  it  to  note,  therefore,  that  it 
was  precisely  at  this  point  of  the  treatment  of  Scrip- 
ture that  the  two  disturbing  movements,  which  really 
agitated  this  period  of  religious  life  in  New  England, 
emerged,  with  something  of  rebellion  against  pre- 
vailing established  conditions. 

These  two  disturbing  movements  —  that  of  Mrs. 
Hutchinson's  promulgation  of  Higlier  Life  and  Per- 
fectionist doctrines,  and  that  of  the  Quakers'  decla- 
ration of  the  Immediate  Guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
—  differed,  indeed,  considerably  from  each  other  and 
were  quite  separate  in  the  personalities  which  they 
represented,  and  in  the  political  and  social  results  to 
which  they  tended.  But  they  were,  after  all,  trace- 
able to  one  root,  —  a  different  view  of  the  authority 
of  Scripture  from  that  commonly  entertained. 


38  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson's  position  was,  however,  in  this  re- 
spect the  less  definitely  pronounced.  Her  contention 
with  the  views  of  the  ministers  and  churches  of  the 
time  seemed,  indeed,  at  first,  to  be  rather  a  matter  of 
a  somewhat  different  explanation  of  Scripture  than 
anything  affecting  the  authority  of  Scripture.  In 
this  aspect  of  the  matter  she  drew  Rev.  John  Cotton 
a  considerable  way  in  his  sympathies  with  her.  But 
as  she  went  on  in  her  public  Bible-readings  about 
faith,  justification,  sanctification,  and  especially  the 
witness  of  the  Spirit,  the  dullest  ear  began  to  suspect 
that  it  was  not  in  expounding  the  Scripture  only  that 
she  differed  from  Wilson  and  Davenport  and  Bulkley, 
and  other  "  black-coats  from  the  Ninniversity,"  but 
in  things  deeper  than  those  of  mere  interpretation, 
as  well.  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  eighty-two 
opinions  alleged  to  be  entertained  by  her,  and  which 
were  certainly  condemned  as  being  hers  by  the 
solemn  Synod  of  1637,  without  seeing  that  the 
fathers  of  the  churches  of  that  day  correctly  dis- 
cerned in  them  a  view  of  Scripture  which,  right  or 
wrong,  certainly  differed  from  their  own. 

When  the  good-hearted,  enthusiastic  woman  said, 
as  the  articles  of  condemnation  allege  she  did  say,  — 
"  The  whole  letter  of  the  Scripture  holds  for  a  cov- 
enant of  workes  ; "  "  The  due  search  and  knowledge 
of  the  holy  Scripture  is  not  a  safe  and  sure  way 
of  searching  and  finding  Christ;"  "There  is  a 
testimony  of  the  Spirit,  and  voyce  unto  the  Soule, 
meerely  immediate,  without  any  respect  unto,  or 
concurrence  with  the  Word,"  —  it  is  plain  that  her 


SOURCES  OF  CONTROVERSY.  39 

breach  with  the  doctrine  generally  taught  in  the 
churches  went  farther  than  any  question  of  Scripture 
explication  only ;  it  reached  to  the  question  of  tlie 
immediacy  of  Divine  revelations  as  well. 

The  Quakers  frankly  took  up,  on  this  point,  the 
position  inferentially  deducible  from  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son's more  guarded  expressions.  They  affirmed  that 
Scripture  was  not  ultimate  and  exclusive.  The 
Spirit  of  God  still  lived  in  His  Church,  still  com- 
municated Himself  to  and  inspired  men.  They  de- 
claimed against  the  ministers  and  the  churches  for 
putting  out  one  eye  of  truth,  and  for  shutting  men  up 
to  a  printed  book  only  for  spiritual  guidance,  when 
God  stood  ready  to  give  Himself  to  every  open  soul. 

But  these  revolts  against  prevailing  views,  though 
productive  of  more  or  less  turmoil,  did  not  seriously 
affect  the  religious  life  of  the  mass  of  men  and 
women.  The  doctrine  of  the  all-sufficiency  of 
Scripture,  and  its  finality  as  authority,  remained 
substantially  undisturbed. 

It  is  often  declared  that  a  period  of  religious  life 
marked  by  such  characteristics  as  have  been  indi- 
cated must  have  been  one  of  universal  hardness  and 
gloom.  It  has  been  fashionable  to  speak  of  Puritan 
times  as  joyless  and  hopeless,  and  of  the  lot  of  men, 
women,  and  children  then  as  only  and  altogether 
miserable.     The  assertion  is  utterly  inaccurate. 

Whether  ascribable  to  the  happy  facility  of  human 
nature,  already  referred  to,  in  evading  the  extremer 
results  of  logical  arguments,  or  because  of  the  resili- 
ency and  vigor  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  constitution,  or 


40  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

because  of  the  consolations  and  comforts  of  the  grace 
of  God  in  human  hearts,  or  more  probably  because  of 
all  of  these  things  with  others  combined,  life  in  those 
Puritan  days  was  not  essentially  gloomy  or  hard  or 
miserable.  The  new-comers  to  this  forest  continent 
had,  indeed,  hard  things  to  encounter.  The  times 
nowhere,  in  the  Old  World  or  the  New,  were  those  of 
softness  or  ease.  Severity  in  the  treatment  of  wrong- 
doing was  the  universal  rule  of  law ;  mercifulness  and 
pity  toward  transgression  of  Divine  or  human  statutes 
were  nowhere  found.  The  softer  side  of  life  had  not 
anywhere  come  to  be  much  taken  into  account. 

But  that  the  Puritans  of  New  England  were  typ- 
ically hard,  austere,  and  unhappy  people,  is  utterly  to 
mistake  their  character,  and  to  falsify  their  relative 
standing-place  among  men. 

Their  legislation  from  the  very  outset,  when  com- 
pared with  English  legislation  at  home,  was  one  of 
mercifulness.  Twelve  different  offenses  were,  in 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  in  1642,  regarded 
as  punishable  with  death.  New  Haven  numbered 
fourteen  at  the  same  date.  But  as  late  as  1819,  in 
Great  Britain,  two  hundred  and  twenty-three  offenses 
were  liable  to  the  extreme  penalty. 

The  numbers  executed  for  witchcraft  in  New  Eng- 
land are  but  a  beggarly  handful  compared  with  those 
who  so  died  in  Old  England ;  and  while  the  last  of 
these  tragedies  in  New  England  occurred  in  1692,  they 
continued  in  Old  England  till  1712.  Is  it  thought 
that  no  place  was  left  for  the  tenderer  emotions 
of  conjugal  and  family  affection?     Read  Margaret 


PURITAN  LIFE   CHEERFUL.  41 

Winthrop's  letters  to  her  husband  for  as  sweet  au 
expression  of  such  sentiments  as  literature  anywhere 
can  show.  Were  the  men  of  that  day  —  untutored 
in  literary  art,  as  is  readily  granted  —  absorbed 
wholly  in  rigorous  severities  of  religious  thought 
and  discipline  ?  Read  William  Wood's  ''  Xew  Eng- 
lands  Prospects,"  and  John  Josselyn's  "  New 
Englands  Rarities  Discovered,"  or  even  Edward 
Johnson's  "  Wonder- Working  Providence  of  Sions 
Saviour,"  and  see  as  keen  an  appreciation  of  nature's 
beauties,  and  of  the  characteristic  life  of  field  and 
wood  and  sky,  as,  in  an  easier  and  more  cultured  time, 
was  ever  possessed  by  a  Bryant  or  a  Longfellow. 

Notice  how  almost  every  one  of  that  day  who 
wrote  at  all,  even  the  grave  Governor  Bradford  of 
Plymouth,  or  the  sage  Mr.  Cotton  of  Boston,  dipped 
occasionally  into  rhyme.  Why,  even  elegiac  and 
epitaphal  verse  bristled  with  quip  and  epigram  ;  as 
witness  this  of  Edward  Bulkley  on  the  death  of  the 
pragmatic  Mr.  Stone  of  Hartford :  — 
"  A  Stone  more  than  the  Ehenezer  fara'd  ; 

Stone  Splendent  Diamond,  right  Orient  nam'd; 
A  Cordial  Stone  that  often  cheared  hearts 
With  pleasant  Wit,  with  Gospels  rich  imparts  : 
Whet-Stone,  that  Edgefi'd  the  obtusest  ]\Iind  ; 
Load-Stone,  that  drew  the  Iron  Heart  unkind ; 
A  Ponderous  Stone,  that  would  the  bottom  sound 
Of  Scrii^ture-depths,  and  bring  out  Arcans  found : 
A  Stone  for  Kingly  Davids  use  so  fit 
As  would  not  fail  Goliaths  Front  to  hit : 
A  Stone,  an  Antidote,  that  break  the  course 
Of  Gangrene  Error  by  convincing  force  ; 
A  Stone  Acute,  fit  to  divide  and  square  ; 
A  Squared  Stone,  became  Christs  Building  rare." 


42  THE  PURITAN  PERIOD. 

The  men  who  did  that  sort  of  thing  —  and  they  were 
many  —  were  not  poets  doubtless,  but  they  were  not 
religious  ascetics  or  misanthropes  either.  They  knew 
a  joke  as  well  as  any  one.  They  appreciated  a  pleas- 
ant turn  of  thought  and  the  utterance  of  a  kindly 
feeling  as  well  as  men  do  to-day. 

It  is  not  true  that  Puritan  life  was  a  life  of  gloom. 
Husbands  and  wives  loved  as  they  do  now.  Children 
were  a  joy  in  households  as  they  are  still.  Young 
men  and  maidens  had  their  attractions,  their  jealous- 
ies, their  trepidations,  their  happy  understandings  at 
the  last,  as  at  present.  About  them  the  seasons 
walked  in  glorious  change  as  they  do  yet.  And  they 
were  not  insensible  to  these  things.  Life  was,  in  all 
its  great  essential  verities  and  joys,  what  we  find  it 
ourselves. 

And  so,  to  bring  this  lecture  to  an  end,  the  period 
closed,  exhibiting  still  a  type  of  piety  essentially  un- 
altered from  that  brought  at  its  beginning  to  these 
shores.  Its  rigorous  doctrines  remained  unabated  in 
severity  of  statement ;  its  sharp  experiences  in  con- 
version were  still  exemplified  ;  but  then,  as  all  along, 
much  that  seemed  inevitably  depressing  and  gloomy 
was  offset  and  alleviated  by  activity,  health,  good- 
hearted  companionship  in  what  they  deemed  a  great 
cause  ;  by  trust  in  God,  and  by  community  of  hope 
and  endeavor,  rising  to  peace,  and  even  to  joy,  in 
self-denial  and  suffering,  for  the  Church's  sake. 


11. 

THE  PURITAN   DECLINE. 

The  previous  lecture  attempted  to  set  forth  the 
characteristics  and  conditions  of  the  religious  life  of 
New  England's  first  generation,  or  generation  and  a 
half,  of  dwellers.  The  period  considered  was,  in  a 
general  way,  from  the  planting  of  the  Plymouth  Col- 
ony in  1620  to  about  the  termination  of  the  active 
lives  of  the  founders  of  the  later  colonies  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  and  New 
Haven  ;  that  is  to  say,  to  about  1655  or  1660. 

It  was  seen  that  the  type  of  religious  life  which 
characteristically  marked  that  opening  period  of  New 
England  history  was  eminent  for  the  strenuous  se- 
verity of  its  doctrinal  conceptions ;  for  its  profound 
and  humiliating  views  of  human  sinfulness  and  dan- 
ger ;  for  its  searching  introspectiveness  into  the  cri- 
teria of  personal  religious  experience  ;  for  its  absolute 
repudiation  of  all  dependence  on  outward  forms  as  a 
ground  of  saving  hope  ;  for  its  reverence  for  the  least 
and  obscurest  phrase  of  Scripture ;  and,  in  general, 
for  its  intensity  and  seriousness,  passing  over  some- 
times into  austerity  and  superstition. 

The  period  whose  type  of  religious  life  is  now  to 
be  considered  stands,  to  a  considerable  extent,  in 
contrast  with  that  just  described.     And  yet,  in  say- 


44  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

ing  this,  and  characterizing  it,  for  want  of  any  better 
name,  as  the  period  of  Puritan  Decline,  too  much  or 
too  sharp  contrast  must  not  be  supposed  to  lie  be- 
tween them.  Large  masses  of  people  do  not  change 
their  religious  attitude  instantly  or  universally.  The 
alteration  is  gradual ;  and  it  is  for  the  most  part  by 
insensible  and  individual  changes  that  things  come 
to  be  what  they  were  not  before.  And,  moreover, 
there  are  always  those  so  conservatively  constituted 
that  they  hardly  appear  to  change  at  all.  So  that, 
characterize  any  given  period  of  history  accurately 
as  one  may,  there  are  some  of  its  constituent  per- 
sonalities and  elements  which  cannot  possibly  be 
brought  within  its  general  terms  of  designation,  and 
which  may  always  be  held  up  as  objections  to  the 
correctness  of  that  designation. 

Still,  on  the  whole,  and  in  a  large  significance  of 
the  phrase,  the  period  of  which  we  are  now  to  think, 
and  which  reaches  from  about  1655  or  1660  to  1735, 
—  three  score  and  fifteen  to  four  score  years, — 
cannot  be  otherwise  denominated  than  as  one  of 
religious  declension. 

Perhaps  no  better  approach  to  the  examination  of 
the  period  now  in  question  can  be  had  than  through 
the  doorway  of  a  paragraph  or  two  from  a  statement 
made,  in  1701,  by  two  old  men  whose  lives  and  ob- 
servations reached  well  back  toward  the  commence- 
ment of  New  England's  religious  story.  One  of  these 
men  was  John  Higginson,  who  was  born  in  England 
in  1616 ;  came  to  this  country  with  his  father, 
Francis,  the  first  Salem  minister  in  1629;   taught 


HIGGINSON  AND  HUBBARD.  45 

school  in  Hartford  in  1638  ;  then  preached  at  Guilford 
for  several  years,  but  settled  in  1660  at  Salem  over 
what  had  once  been  his  father's  church,  where  he 
sustained  a  pastorate  of  nearly  half  a  century,  till 
his  death,  in  1708,  terminated  a  ministry  of  seventy- 
two  years.  He  was,  at  the  period  of  his  Testimony, 
eighty-five  years  of  age. 

The  other  man  was  William  Hubbard,  also  born 
in  England,  in  1621 ;  who  arrived  in  this  country  in 
1635 ;  graduated  in  the  first  class  sent  forth  from 
Harvard  College  in  1642 ;  and  occupied  an  honorable 
pastorate  at  Ipswich  for  forty-eight  years.  Here  he 
wrote  a  History  of  New  England,  indorsed  by  the 
Massachusetts  General  Court ;  and,  at  the  date  of  his 
uniting  with  Higginson  in  a  public  declaration  of 
their  joint  convictions  on  the  religious  situation,  was 
eighty-one  years  of  age.  I  will  quote  only  a  few  sen- 
tences from  this  remarkable  and  pathetic  document. 

"Above  Seventy  YQiXY^'^  have  passed  away,  since  one 
of  us,  and  above  Sixty  since  the  other  of  us  came  into 
New-England ;  and  having  obtained  Helj)  from  God,  lue 
continue  to  this  Day. 

"  We  are  therefore  Capable  to  make  some  Comparison, 
between  the  Condition  of  the  Churches,  when  they  were 
first  Erected  in  this  Country,  and  the  Condition  into  which 
they  are  now  Fallen,  and  more  Falling  every  day. 

"  But  we  wish,  that  in  making  tins  Comparison,  we  had 
not  cause  to  take  the  place,  and  the  part  of  those  Old  Men, 
that  saw  the  Young  Men,  Shouting  aloud  for  Joy,  at  the 

1  A  Testimony  to  the  Order  of  the  Gospel,  in  the  Churches  of  New 
England  (1701). 


46  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

New- Temple.  Ezra  3  :  12.  Ancient  men  that  had  seen 
the  First  House  ;  when  the  Foundation  of  this  House  was 
laid  before  their  Eyes,  Wept  with  a  loud  Voice.  We  are 
under  a  daily  Expectation  of  our  call  to  appear  before 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  and  we  have  reason  to  be  above 
all  things  concerned,  that  we  may  Give  up  our  Account 
ivith  Joy  unto  Him.  That  we  may  be  the  better  able  to 
do  so,  we  judge  it  necessary  for  us,  to  leave  in  the  Hands 
of  the  Churches,  a  brief  Testimony,  to  the  Cause  of  God., 
and  His  People  in  this  Land.  And  this  the  rather,  be- 
cause we  are  sensible  that  there  is  Risen  and  Rising 
among  us,  a  Number  who  not  only  forsake  the  Right 
ivayes  of  the  Lord,  wherein  these  Holy  Churches  have 
walked,  but  also  labour  to  carry  away,  as  many  others 

with  them  as  they  can And  this  we  Declare  with 

the  more  concern  upon  our  minds,  because  of  an  Obser- 
vation, so  plain,  that  he  that  runs  may  Head  it.  It  is 
too  observable.  That  the  Power  of  Godliness,  is  exceed- 
ingly Decaying  and  Expiring  in  the  Country." 

We  might,  perhaps,  take  these  utterances  of  Hig- 
ginson  and  Hubbard  as  the  sad  retrospective  ex- 
pressions of  advanced  age  looking  backward  on  past 
times  as  better  times,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  which 
meets  us  in  so  many  forms,  —  in  sermons,  in  legisla- 
tive enactments,  in  proclamations  of  executive  offi- 
cers, in  records  of  criminal  prosecutions,  as  well  as 
in  solemn  ec-clesiastical  assemblies  called  to  put  a 
barrier  to  growing  evils  in  church  and  society, — 
that  the  statement  of  the  old  men  in  their  Testi- 
mony was  not  only  true,  but  was  generally  recog- 
nized as  being  true. 


DECLINE   GENERALLY  RECOGNIZED.       47 

Already,  twenty-two  years  before  this  time  of  the 
old  men's  Testimony,  a  Synod,  —  called  by  the  Gen- 
eral Court  of  Massachusetts,  and  known  from  the  at- 
tempt it  made  to  redress  the  evils  which  occasioned 
its  summons  as  the  "Reforming  Synod,"  —  had,  in 
1679,  put  on  record  its  acknowledgment  of  a  "  great 
and  visible  decay  of  the  power  of  Godliness  "  in  the 
churches.  It  pointed  out  in  minute  and  elaborate 
specification  among  the  evils  of  the  time,  and  which 
were  believed  by  the  Synod  to  have  brought  Divine 
judgments  upon  the  country,  those  of  neglect  of  Di- 
vine worship,  disregard  of  sacramental  observances, 
pride,  profanity.  Sabbath-breaking,  family  lawless- 
ness and  irreligion,  intemperance,  licentiousness, 
covetousness,  and  untruthfulness,  as  largely  prevail- 
ing and  characterizing  the  period. 

There  is  manifold  and  incontestable  evidence  from 
every  quarter  that  the  indictment,  pathetically  brought 
against  the  generation  to  which  the  two  old  men 
addressed  their  dying  appeal,  had  in  it  a  tremendous 
weight  of  truth  ;  and  that  the  state  of  things  in  view 
of  which  it  was  spoken,  and  which  was  prolonged  for 
years  after  their  ineffectual  voices  had  become  silent, 
was  in  many  ways  contrasted,  in  its  prevalent  type  of 
religious  life,  with  that  which  had  characterized  the 
first  generation  or  two  of  New  England  dwellers. 

But,  though  the  main  object  of  the  present  lec- 
tures is  to  analyze  and  depict  the  characterizing 
features  of  the  religious  life  prevailing  at  different 
epochs  of  New  England  history,  rather  than  to  set 
forth  at  large  the  causes  which,  from  time  to  time, 


48  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

wrought  alterations  in  those  features  ;  still,  in  the 
case  of  the  present  period,  as  in  that  which  went  be- 
fore and  in  those  which  will  follow,  some  glance  at 
the  influences  which  combined  to  change  the  type  of 
religious  life  from  that  which  previously  prevailed, 
may  be  the  shortest  road  to  an  appreciative  under- 
standing of  the  type  itself. 

One  influence,  then,  which  wrought  powerfully  to 
alter  the  tone  of  religious  feeling  brought  by  the  first- 
comers  to  this  land  to  one  of  a  lower  level,  grew  out 
of  the  inevitable  facts  of  life  in  a  new,  undeveloped 
country.  The  first  settlers,  coming  from  the  com- 
paratively cultivated  ways  of  their  European  homes, 
and  coming,  too,  under  the  impulse  of  high  motives 
and  aspirations,  could  in  their  own  persons  largely 
resist  the  deteriorating  tendencies  of  sordid  surround- 
ings, meager  social  privileges,  scant  educative  oppor- 
tunities ;  and  some,  through  the  power  of  their  high 
moral  intent,  could  even  turn  the  very  lack  of  these 
things  oftentimes  to  spiritual  advantage.  But  it  was 
very  different  with  their  grandchildren.  These  had 
to  grow  up  in  destitution,  to  a  great  extent,  of  ade- 
quate schooling,  or  of  proper  instruction  in  the 
common  amenities  of  life.  The  fathers  did,  indeed, 
considering  the  age  and  the  exigencies  of  their  situ- 
ation, manifest  a  heroic  courage  and  foresight  in 
their  attempts  to  establish  schools,  and  even  to  found 
a  college  almost  at  the  very  first.  It  was  only  1636 
when  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  ordered 
the  beginning  of  Harvard  College.  It  was  only  1642 
when  the  same  authority  took  common  schools  at 


BARBARIZING   TENDENCIES.  49 

public  cost  into  legislative  care.  Connecticut  Colony 
had  provision  for  such  schools  before  1642,  and  New 
Haven  Colony  in  1641. 

Lord  Macaulay,  in  1847,  made  a  famous  address 
in  Parliament,  eulogizing  as  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able of  historic  events  this  early  recognition  by 
"  exiles  living  in  a  wilderness,"  of  the  great  "  prin- 
ciple that  the  State  should  take  upon  itself  the 
charge  of  the  education  of  the  people."  Well  might 
he  do  so,  for  this  principle  never  was  fully  recog- 
nized in  England  till  the  year  1870. 

But  it  was  easier  for  the  fathers  liberally  to  plan 
than  fully  to  execute.  Life  pressed  hard  on  them. 
The  demands  of  daily  toil  were  exacting  and  depress- 
ing. The  school  privileges  afforded  in  the  scattered 
townships  were  necessarily  scanty  in  amount  and 
meager  in  quality.  The  common  intercourse  of  men 
took  on  a  tone  of  rudeness,  characteristic  always  of 
pioneer  life  and  separation  from  the  softening  and 
civilizing  influences  of  long  established  communities. 

The  descendants,  too,  of  a  class  of  people  quite  or 
nearly  contemporaneous  with  the  original  settlers,  — 
their  servants  or  adventuring  hangers-on  or  followers, 
—  who  never  had  any  special  sympathy  with  the  high 
ideals  of  the  real  fathers  of  the  New  England  enter- 
prise, had  multiplied  as  well  as  the  offspring  of  the 
founders  themselves,  and  had  naturally  suffered  more 
even  than  they  from  the  influences  which  led  to 
moral  decline.  They  were  relatively  a  numerous, 
and  positively  a  debasing,  factor  in  the  life  of  the 
colonial  towns  and  villages. 


50  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE, 

Then,  too,  as  time  went  on,  there  was  a  progress- 
ive decline  in  that  important  source  of  educative 
advantage  found  in  the  utterances  and  influence  of 
the  pulpit.  The  great  leaders  of  the  New  England 
immigration  were  university  men.  Some  of  them 
were  men  of  national  distinction  in  their  own  land. 
Some  had  had  the  benefit  of  continental  travel  and 
observation.  Many  of  them  came  of  families  of 
long  recognized  standing  and  worth.  Cotton  Mather 
enumerates  1  seventy-seven  ministers  of  the  early 
New  England  churches  who  began  their  ministry  in 
the  old  country,  and  who  must  have  been,  nearly 
without  exception,  graduates  of  the  highest  educa- 
tional institutions  of  their  English  home.  And  some 
of  their  hearers,  like  Winthrop  and  Bradstreet  and 
Vane,  were  scholars  of  the  same  universities. 

But  these  men  one  after  another  died.  The  pro- 
vision they  had  wisely  made  for  the  perpetuation  of 
a  godly  and  learned  ministry  availed,  indeed,  to  pre- 
vent the  New  England  pulpit  from  ever  becoming  a 
feeble  one,  or  one  not  distinctly  educative  and  supe- 
rior in  its  leadership  of  the  time.  But  there  was, 
speaking  generally,  a  decline. 

And  there  was  more  decline  in  the  pews.  The 
number  of  well-educated  laymen  showed  a  still 
greater  relative  disparity  as  the  years  went  by. 
Evidences  of  this  popular  falling  off  of  intelligence 
are  very  familiar  to  every  one  who  has  had  occasion 
to  examine  the  handwriting  and  the  spelling  of 
wills,  deeds,  and  public  records  of  the  period  now 

1  Magnalia  (ed.  1820),  pp.  213-215. 


EDUCATIONAL  DECLINE.  61 

in  question,  compared  with  that  which  went  before. 
This  nearly  universal  token  of  the  degeneracy  just 
spoken  of  is  well  illustrated  in  the  indorsement 
made  on  Governor  Bradford's  manuscript  History  of 
Plymouth  Colony  by  his  grandson,  Samuel  Bradford, 
which  reads  as  follows  :  — 

"  This  book  was  vit  by  goefner  William  Bradford,  aud 
gifen  to  his  son  mager  William  Bradford,  and  by  him 
to  his  son  mager  John  Bradford,  rit  by  me  Samuel  Brad- 
ford, Mach.  20.  1705." 

The  writer  was  a  lieutenant,  a  selectman  of  Dux- 
bury,  a  juryman,  and  an  important  citizen  ;  but  he 
spelled  the  title  of  his  grandfather  the  honored  gov- 
ernor, ''  goefner,"  and  that  of  his  father  and  brother 
the  majors, '-mager";  given  became  "  gifen  "  ;  and 
there  were  various  other  personal  aberrations  of 
orthography. 

So  that,  quite  apart  from  the  operation  of  any 
other  causes  than  those  necessarily  inherent  in  the 
gravitating  tendency  of  frontier  experiences  and  the 
inevitable  deprivations  and  hardships  of  a  raw,  new 
country,  it  is  not  surprising  that  life,  in  all  its  digni- 
ties and  adornments,  stood  at  a  distinctly  lower  level 
than  it  had  done  from  fifty  to  seventy  years  before. 

Meantime,  to  an  extent  perhaps  not  generally  re- 
membered, the  people  of  the  period  under  considera- 
tion were  almost  wild  with  wliat  may  be  called  the 
land-grabbing  spirit.  No  modern  Oklahoma  or  Chero- 
kee-strip invaders  can  surpass  the  fervor  of  those 
New  Englanders  of  the  period  from  1660  to  1735.  in 


52  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

their  desire  to  get  possession  of  the  good  spots  of  un- 
occupied territory.  It  was  the  great  town-planting 
epoch  of  our  New  England  history.  A  hundred  and 
nine  of  the  present  townships  of  Massachusetts,  and 
more  than  eighty  of  Connecticut,  date  their  settle- 
ment or  their  arrival  at  the  dignity  of  incorporation 
in  the  seventy-fiYe  years  now  imder  review.  Com- 
panies for  the  purchase  and  settlement  of  new  town- 
ships were  formed  in  every  considerable  community. 
To  get  more  and  more  land  was  the  consuming 
endeavor  of  the  hour.  Of  course  this  impulse  but 
extended  and  aggravated  the  evils  of  frontier  life 
already  spoken  of, — evils  which  might,  in  some  meas- 
ure, have  been  corrected  had  the  people  been  content 
to  settle  down  more  compactly  to  the  improvement 
of  the  communities  already  established.  But  the 
anticipatory  Western  fever  was  on  them  ;  and  to  get 
further  into  the  woods  seemed  a  passion. 

There  were  other  causes,  also,  which  powerfully  and 
unfavorably  affected  the  conditions  necessary,  or  at 
least  especially  desirable,  for  healthy  and  progressive 
religious  life.  The  period  was  one  of  almost  contin- 
uous political  anxiety,  and  often  of  active  military 
strife. 

The  epoch  opened  with  the  solicitudes  attendant 
upon  the  restoration  to  power  in  England,  in  1660, 
of  that  Stuart  dynasty  to  escape  whose  earlier  tyranny 
the  founders  of  these  colonies  had  come  to  these 
shores  ;  and  with  consequent  apprehension  of  peril 
to  their  chartered  liberties.  The  colonists  had  cour- 
age and  fidelity  to  welcome  and  secrete  the  regicide 


CIVIL  DISTURBANCES.  63 

judges,  Goffe,  Whalley,  and  Dixwell ;  but  they  did  it 
with  trembling,  lest  it  bring  down  upon  them  the 
penalty  of  a  revocation  of  every  accorded  civil 
privilege. 

With  the  years  1675  and  1676  came  that  most 
desperate  of  all  our  New  England  Indian  struggles, 
known  as  King  Philip's  War,  which  carried  ravage 
and  fire  around  the  whole  circumference  of  the  colo- 
nies, though  having  its  chief  seat  in  eastern  Massa- 
chusetts and  in  Rhode  Island. 

Upwards  of  six  hundred  of  the  flower  and  strength 
of  the  youth  and  middle  age  of  the  land  perished  in 
that  short  but  tremendous  struggle.  Twelve  or  thir- 
teen towns  were  entirely  destroyed,  and  about  six 
hundred  buildings  burned  ;  while  the  colonies,  en- 
feebled in  productive  manhood,  found  themselves 
burdened  by  oppressive  debt. 

The  year  1684  saw  issued  out  of  the  English  Chan- 
cery the  long-dreaded  writ  of  forfeiture  of  the  Mas- 
sachusetts charter;  and  1685  beheld  proceedings 
looking  toward  a  similar  action  against  Connecticut. 
The  year  following  brought  Sir  Edmund  Andros  to 
Boston  with  a  commission  for  the  immediate  govern- 
ment of  all  New  England  ;  an  attempted  exercise  of 
which  authority  in  Connecticut  was  attended  in  Hart- 
ford, in  1687,  by  the  excitements  and  tumults  accom- 
panying the  hiding  of  the  charter  in  the  ever  since 
historic  Charter  Oak. 

The  accession  of  William  and  Mary,  in  1689, 
brought  relief,  indeed,  from  the  machination  of 
Andros  ;  but  it  brought  also  the  responsibilities  of 


54  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

participating  with  the  Mother  Country  in  a  French 
war,  and  the  expedition  against  Quebec  in  1690. 

The  years  1692  and  1693  cast  over  eastern  Massa- 
chusetts in  particular,  and  over  all  New  England  in 
some  degree,  the  awful  shadow  of  the  witchcraft 
prosecutions,  in  which  more  than  a  hundred  women, 
not  to  speak  of  many  men,  mostly  of  the  fairest 
character,  and  many  of  them  of  excellent  families, 
were  arrested,  examined,  and  generally  imprisoned, 
as  in  complicity  with  the  Devil.  Nineteen  executions 
by  hanging  of  persons  thus  adjudged  guilty,  and  one 
person  pressed  to  death  for  refusing  to  say  whether 
he  was  guilty  or  not,  —  doubtless  because  he  saw  the 
uselessness  of  a  denial,  and  hoped  thus  to  save  his 
property  for  his  family,  —  evidenced,  in  Massachu- 
setts alone,  the  terrible  power  of  a  delusion  which  it 
was  felt  might  break  out  at  any  time  and  anywhere, 
and  against  which  the  purest  character  and  the  most 
intimate  family  ties  were  powerless  to  defend.  Thirty 
years  before,  the  Connecticut  Colony  had  been  the 
scene  of  a  somewhat  similar  excitement,  though  on 
a  lesser  scale,  in  which  at  least  six  persons  were 
hanged,  and  several  others  condemned. 

Queen  Anne's  War  broke  out  in  1703,  and  with  it 
the  horrors  of  Indian  incursion,  one  incident  of  which 
was  the  assault  on  Deerfield,  in  1704,  the  massacre 
of  forty-seven  of  its  inhabitants,  and  the  transport  to 
Canada  of  a  hundred  prisoners,  including  Rev.  Mr. 
Williams,  who  saw  his  invalid  wife  tomahawked  not 
many  furlongs  from  his  burning  house.  The  col- 
onists retaliated  these  incursions  by  an  expedition 


WITCHCRAFT  AND  WAR.  55 

along  the  Penobscot  and  Passamaquoddy  shores  even 
as  far  as  Port  Royal.  This  French  stronghold  was 
again  approached,  and  vigorously,  though  unsuccess- 
fully, assaulted  in  1707,  but  was  at  last  captured  in 
1710.  The  next  year,  1711,  saw  the  expedition  by 
land  and  sea  against  Canada,  and  its  abortive 
conclusion. 

Meantime,  all  along  during  these  exciting  scenes 
of  political  agitation,  social  disturbance,  and  military 
struggle,  the  feeble  colonists  Iiad  been  harassed  and 
oppressed  by  laws  of  the  home  government,  laying 
heavy  burdens  on  their  commerce,  and  treating  them 
as  sources  of  enrichment  to  English  enterprise  and 
to  the  national  treasury,  rather  than  as  infant  com- 
monwealths, to  be  protected  and  developed  in  health- 
ful growth.  These  disadvantages  were  still  further 
aggravated,  especially  for  the  Massachusetts  Colony, 
by  the  disastrous  experiments  of  that  province  in 
paper  currency.  Up  to  the  date  which  has  been  set 
as  the  close  of  the  period  under  survey  in  this  lecture, 
namely,  1735,  Connecticut  had  not  suffered  much 
from  this  cause  of  trouble.  Her  turn  came,  however, 
a  little  later.  From  these  early  New  England  exper- 
iments in  finance,  some  of  our  present-day  politi- 
cal leaders,  one  might  suppose,  could  learn  a  very 
instructive  lesson.  Not  a  scheme  now  advocated  as 
a  brand-new  method  of  securing  what  our  politicians 
delight  in  calling  an  "  elastic  but  stable  currency, 
with  every  dollar  equal  to  every  other  dollar,"  but 
had  then  its  supporters.  A  currency  based  on  inter- 
changeable commodities  ;  a  currency  based  on  real 


B6  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

estate ;  a  currency  based  on  the  credit  of  commer- 
cial associations, — all  had  their  advocates.  But  then, 
—  as  always,  till  a  fresh  lesson  of  calamity  teaches 
its  peril  anew,  —  fiat  money  was  the  popular  form  of 
finance,  and  the  form  resorted  to.  Fiat  money  was 
issued  in  great  quantities  during  this  period  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  a  little  later  in  Connecticut,  with  the 
result  of  momentary  inflation  and  quickly  following 
collapse  of  all  commercial  enterprise,  shrinkage  of 
all  actual  incomes,  hardship,  and  disaster. 

Then  too.  Nature,  or  Providence,  seemed  to  con- 
spire with  human  foes  to  awaken  distress  and  alarm. 
Violent  hurricanes  repeatedly  ravaged  the  slight- 
built  towns  and  destroyed  shipping  along  the  coasts. 
The  years  1663,  1727,  and  1737,  were  marked  by 
alarming  earthquakes.  In  1676,  Boston  was  visited 
by  a  fire  which  burned  up  forty-five  dwelling-houses, 
the  North  Church,  and  several  warehouses,  —  an  ex- 
perience which,  in  1679,  was  repeated  on  a  larger 
scale  in  the  destruction  of  eighty  dwellings,  seventy 
warehouses,  and  several  vessels  at  the  wharves,  entail- 
ing a  loss  of  two  hundred  thousand  pounds.  Epi- 
demics of  small-pox  raged  in  1692,  1700,  and  1721, 
and  diphtheria, known  as  "throat  distemper,"  swept 
across  the  country  in  1700,  and  again  in  1735. 

Meantime,  coming  closer  to  things  distinctively 
religious,  men's  minds  were  agitated  out  of  that 
general  agreement  as  to  what  was  true  and  right  in 
religious  belief  and  practice  which  had,  to  so  great 
an  extent,  characterized  a  previous  generation,  and 
which  seems  so  largely  essential  to  the  development 


RELIGIOUS  CONTROVERSY.  57 

of  any  pervasive  type  of  religious  character.  The 
occasions  of  these  agitations  were  various. 

One  of  them,  early  in  the  period  at  present  under 
survey,  grew  out  of  the  presence  and  prophesyings 
in  various  parts  of  New  England  of  the  Quakers,  and 
the  witness  borne  by  them  against  what  they  claimed 
to  be  the  errors  of  an  ecclesiastical  tyranny. 

These  protests  were  often  almost  insane  in  their 
extravagance  of  language,  as  well  as  in  their  offen- 
siveness  and  sometimes  indecency  of  manner;  but 
the  undeniable  sincerity  out  of  which  they  sprang, 
and  the  heroic  patience  with  which  their  promulga- 
tors endured  cruel  stripes  and  imprisonments,  and 
even  death,  in  support  of  their  convictions,  made  an 
impression,  nevertheless,  and  awoke  questionings  in 
many  minds  which  did  not  give  utterance  to  speech, 
concerning  the  infallibility  of  that  spiritual  guidance 
under  which  New  England  found  itself. 

It  was  not  without  its  deeply  disquieting  influence, 
after  various  other  lesser  severities  had  been  visited 
upon  a  large  number  of  earlier  offenders  of  this  sect, 
that,  at  the  close  of  the  Thursday  lecture  on  tlie 
27th  of  October,  1659,  the  people  of  Boston  saw 
three  condemned  persons, —  William  Robinson,  ^far- 
maduke  Stevenson,  and  Mary  Dyer,  —  marched  be- 
tween a  file  of  soldiers  on  either  hand  to  the  place 
of  execution.  The  prisoners  had  been  warned  out 
of  the  Bay  Colony  under  the  terms  of  a  statute 
which  sentenced  Quakers  to  banishment,  and,  if 
banishment  was  disregarded,  to  death. 

Mary  Dyer  walked  between   the  two  male   pris- 


58  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

oners,  hand  in  hand  with  them,  with  shining  face 
and  uplifted  eyes,  radiant  as  to  a  wedding  hour. 
The  drummers  were  placed  close  to  the  prisoners  to 
drown  their  voices  if  they  should  attempt  to  address 
the  people.  Thirty-six  sentinels  were  stationed 
about  the  town  to  preserve  order,  and  to  give  notice 
of  any  attempt  at  outbreak  against  the  authorities ; 
for  many  of  the  townsmen,  who  had  no  sympathy 
with  Quaker  doctrines,  and  who  were  disgusted  with 
Quaker  extravagances  and  pretensions  to  prophetic 
light  and  authority,  were  even  more  shocked  at  the 
cruelty  of  the  treatment  to  which  they  w^ere  sub- 
jected. Arrived  at  the  gallows,  Mary  Dyer  was  re- 
prieved —  reprieved  only  for  a  time ;  for,  being  sent 
out  of  the  province,  she  returned  in  May  following, 
again  to  be  sentenced,  and  at  that  time  actually  to 
die.  Her  two  companions  were  hanged,  and  their 
bodies  put  in  a  shallow  hole  in  the  ground  without 
coffins,  or  other  vestments  than  those  they  wore  to 
execution.  Sympathizing  Quaker  friends  came  to 
the  spot  a  day  or  two  after,  and  were  permitted 
to  disinter  the  bodies  and  robe  them  somewhat 
more  decently  for  the  grave,  but  were  not  allowed 
to  furnish  coffins. 

Such  scenes  as  this  strained,  fully  as  tautly  as  it 
would  bear,  the  bond  of  allegiance  of  many  to  their 
political  and  religious  guides,  and  awoke  more  prol)- 
lems  by  far  than  they  settled  in  the  people's  minds. 

Later,  somewhat  similar  questionings  arose,  occa- 
sioned by  the  spread  of  Baptist  principles.  It  had 
not  been  without  its  occasion  for  stir  in  people's 


RELIGIOUS   CONTROVERSY.  59 

thought  that,  as  early  as  1654,  Henry  Dunster,  the 
first  President  of  Harvard  College,  had  been  com- 
pelled to  retire  from  that  institution  for  adopting 
the  Baptist  idea  of  church-membership.  And  now, 
in  spite  of  legislative  enactments  and  of  ecclesias- 
tical denunciation,  Baptist  churches  were  increasing 
in  all  the  colonies.  It  is  true  that  their  members, 
except  of  course  in  Rhode  Island,  were  under  social 
disadvantages,  and  were  taxed  for  the  support  of 
religious  institutions  in  which  they  did  not  believe, 
and  imprisoned  when  they  would  not  pay  the  tax ; 
but  still  they  and  the  controversy  grew. 

A  Baptist  church  edifice  was  erected  in  Boston 
almost  surreptitiously  —  that  is,  the  proposed  object 
of  the  edifice  was  kept  a  secret  while  in  building  — 
in  the  year  1679.  Its  erection  was  the  signal  of 
violent  outcry  against  the  promoters  of  Baptist  sen- 
timents on  the  part  of  the  regular,  that  is,  the  Con- 
gregational, ministry,  and  was  the  occasion  of  a 
distinct  reference  in  the  Result  of  the  Synod  of 
1679,  before  spoken  of,  as  being  "  an  altar  "  set  up 
against  the  "  Lord's  altar."  So  great  was  the  oppo- 
sition aroused  that,  in  March,  1680,  the  promoters 
of  the  enterprise  were  brought  before  the  Court  of 
Assistants ;  and,  because  they  would  not  promise  to 
cease  from  their  undertaking,  the  magistrates  ordered 
their  church  doors  to  be  nailed  up.  This,  of  course, 
—  hum  m  nature  being  what  it  is,  —  did  not  tend  to 
allay  excitement  about  Baptist  principles  or  very 
much  retard  their  growth. 

Moreover,  and  still  more  alarming  in  the  view  of 


60  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

many,  because  backed  by  governmental  and  ecclesi- 
astical authority  from  abroad,  attempts  were  being 
made  to  introduce  into  New  England  a  form  of  church- 
o-overnment  which  it  had  been  the  distinct  object  of 
some  of  the  colonists  in  coming  here  to  escape ;  and 
which  others,  through  their  observations  and  experi- 
ences on  this  soil,  had  rejoiced  to  have  left  behind. 
An  Episcopal  congregation,  with  all  its  characteris- 
tic claims  to  be  the  only  true  church  in  the  place, 
was  formed  in  Boston  in  1686.  An  English  society 
for  the  purpose  of  the  "  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
[that  is  to  say,  Episcopacy]  in  Foreign  Parts  "  was 
organized  in  1701,  with  direct  intent  to  carry  the 
system  established  by  law  at  home  into  the  American 
dependencies  of  the  Crown.  The  first  fruit  of  this 
enterprise  in  New  England  was  the  founding  of  an 
Episcopal  mission  at  Stratford,  Connecticut,  in  1706  ; 
while  a  still  more  startling  token  of  the  Society's 
activity  was  found  in  the  announcement  made  to 
the  Trustees  of  Yale  College  at  the  Commencement 
in  September,  1722,  that  the  rector  of  the  College, 
its  tutor  then  in  office,  and  five  neighboring  Congre- 
gational ministers,  were  on  the  point  of  receiving 
Episcopal  orders. 

But,  unfavorable  as  some  of  these  things  were  in 
themselves,  and  all  of  them  in  the  disquietude  ac- 
companying them,  to  the  prevalence  and  growth  of 
a  high  and  uniform  type  of  religious  life  among  the 
people  generally,  still  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  one  of  them  was  so  influential  in  letting  down 
the  tone  of  religious  principle  and  behavior  as  a  cause 


THE  HALF-WAY  COVENANT.  61 

which  yet  remains  to  be  spoken  of,  and  which,  like 
many  other  errors  of  good  but  short-sighted  men, 
grew  out  of  an  honest  attempt  to  serve  the  interests 
of  piety  and  of  the  Church. 

This  cause  of  religious  declension  was  the  opera- 
tion of  the  Half-way  Covenant. 

The  fundamental  principle  of  the  founders  of  the 
New  England  churches  in  coming  out  from  the 
National  Church  of  the  old  country,  was  that  a 
church  should  be  composed  only  of  recognizably 
regenerate  souls.  As  Thomas  Hooker  phrased  the 
doctrine  :  ^  "  Visible  Saints  are  the  matter,"  and 
*'  confederation  the  form,"  by  which  only  a  true 
church  can  be  constituted. 

But  with  this  principle,  which  certainly  implied 
discernible  Christian  character  and  intelligence 
enough  to  enter  into  mutual  covenant,  was  associated 
the  additional  doctrine  that  the  children  of  visible 
confederated  saints  were  themselves  also  church- 
members  and  saints  :  and  of  course  that  their  chil- 
dren also  would  be  so  in  their  turn.  This  did  well 
enough  so  long  as  the  children  of  the  first  covenant- 
ing parents  were  children,  and  the  question  of  their 
saintliness  remained  a  hypotlietical  matter.  But 
how  when  they  grew  up  to  manhood  and  woman- 
hood, and  were  consciously  and  visibly  no  saints 
at  all,  in  that  interior  and  self-scrutinizing  sense 
which  was  generally  admitted  as  necessary  to  eter- 
nal life  ?  Where  did  such  people  stand  ?  Would 
the  best  way  to  treat  them  be  to  abandon  any  theory 

1  Hooker's  Survey,  Preface. 


62  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

which  asserted  the  membership  of  children  with  their 
parents  in  the  church  at  all,  and  to  deliver  them  over 
to  the  "  micovenanted  mercy"  of  their  Maker, — 
and  to  the  machinations  of  the  Devil ;  —  or  would  it 
be  better  to  adhere,  at  least  in  part,  to  the  theory 
which  had  been  conscientiously  held  of  their  church 
connection,  so  endeavoring  to  retain  them  and  their 
offspring  in  visible  association  with  the  people  of 
God,  while  nevertheless  limiting  their  privileges  as 
church-members,  as  not  being  fully  qualified  for  par- 
ticipation in  all  rites  ?  The  question  was  long  and 
earnestly  and  most  conscientiously  debated.  In  min- 
isterial correspondence,  in  ecclesiastical  assembly, 
and  finally  in  a  governmentally  called  Synod,  the 
problem  of  the  relation  of  the  children  of  church- 
members  to  the  Church  was  discussed. 

The  conclusion  finally  reached,  and  gradually  ac- 
cepted throughout  the  Congregational  churches  of 
New  England,  was  that  such  children  were  to  this 
extent  church-members,  and  visibly  in  covenant  by 
reason  of  their  baptism  in  infancy,  that  they  in  turn 
could  present  their  children  for  the  reception  of  the 
same  rite ;  but  that  neither  they  nor  their  children 
could  be  accounted  full  members,  entitled  to  partici- 
pate in  the  Lord's  Supper,  or  in  the  voting  privileges  of 
the  church.  For  these  things  a  further  experience  and 
an  additional  act  of  public  consecration  were  requi- 
site. Two  forms  of  covenants  thus  came  into  use  in 
enrolling  the  membership  of  the  churches, —  one  for 
the  full-membership  of  those  who  professed  and  gave 
evidence  of  spiritual  change ;  the  other  for  those  who 


THE  HALF-WAY  COVENANT.  63 

did  not  profess  to  go  so  far  as  that,  but  only  cov- 
enanted practically  to  do  the  best  they  could,  and  to 
bring  up  their  children  to  do  likewise.  Hence  the 
nick-name  ''  Half-way  "  Covenant,  expressive  of  the 
limited  profession  and  partial  membership  of  those 
who  entered  into  it. 

But,  however  conscientiously  devised,  this  scheme 
wrought  inevitable  mischief  to  the  spiritual  life  of 
the  period  we  are  considering.  It  afforded  a  sort  of 
easy  resting-place  for  people  between  utter  neglect 
of  religion  and  full  surrender  to  its  claims.  It  gave 
to  parental  instincts  the  solace  of  a  kind  of  commen- 
dation of  their  children  to  God,  which  did  not,  how- 
ever, imply  the  entire  surrender  by  the  parents  of 
their  own  hearts,  nor  an  expectation  of  their  chil- 
dren's surrender.  It  cheapened  disastrously  the 
conception  of  the  privilege  and  responsibility  of 
church-membership  itself ;  and,  more  disastrous  still, 
it  turned  attention  to  that  which  was  in  nature  most 
contrary  to  the  Puritan  idea,  —  the  observation  of 
a  form,  and  trust  in  a  ceremony,  on  the  part  some- 
times of  a  chief  portion  of  those  who  were  nominally 
connected  with  the  church.  So  that  the  curious 
spectacle  came  to  be  witnessed  of  a  people,  who  two 
or  three  generations  before  had  come  out  from  a 
foreign  land  and  from  home  and  clmrch-relation- 
ship  as  a  protest  against  formalism,  becoming,  by 
the  period  of  which  we  are  speaking,  in  reference 
to  a  very  large  part  of  their  posterity,  distinctly 
formalistic. 

This  formalizing  tendency  in  religion,  character- 


64  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

istic  of  this  period,  received  a  large  impulse,  more- 
over, from  a  cause  less  distinctly  marked  in  its 
origin  than  the  ecclesiastical  arrangement  we  have 
just  considered ;  namely,  a  gradual  and  insensible, 
but  progressive,  change  in  the  directions  uttered 
from  the  pulpit  as  to  the  method  of  entrance  on  a 
religious  life.  There  was  as  yet  little  dissent  in 
New  England  from  the  old-time  inculcation  of  the 
helpless  passivity  of  the  soul  of  man  in  the  crisis  of 
conversion.  But  with  the  decline  of  the  spiritual  in- 
tensity of  the  earlier  generation,  and  with  decreasing 
examples  of  that  religious  transformation  once  so  fre- 
quent and  so  volcanic  in  quality,  enhanced  attention 
was  turned  to  those  things  which  might  be  accounted 
likely  to  promote,  or  at  least  to  put  a  man  in  advan- 
tageous position  for,  the  accomplishment  in  him  of  a 
work  he  was  powerless  himself  to  perform.  No  man 
could  make  himself  a  Christian ;  but  there  were 
things  he  could  do,  which  would  perhaps  render  it 
more  likely  that  he  would  divinely  and  irresistibly 
be  made  one.  He  could  pray.  He  could  go  dili- 
gently to  church.  He  could  catechise  his  children. 
He  could  even,  if  he  had  been  baptized  himself  in 
infancy,  in  the  judgment  of  the  very  eminent  Sol- 
omon Stoddard  of  Northampton,  and  of  a  consider- 
able number  of  other  distinguished  pastors,  partake 
of  the  Lord's  Supper,  though  consciously  unregen- 
erate,  as  one  of  the  means  by  which,  or  in  connec- 
tion with  which,  the  converting  grace  might  possibly 
descend  upon  his  soul. 

It  will  be  easily  seen  how  readily,  in  a  time  of 


FORMALIZING   TENDENCIES.  Q)^ 

general  religious  decline,  the  emphasis  of  religious 
exhortation  would  change  from  entreaties  to  be  at 
once  repentant  and  believing,  to  admonitions  to  make 
use  of  means  for  becoming  so.  Nor  is  it  less  obvious 
how  direct  would  be  the  tendency  of  exhortations  of 
this  character  to  fix  primary  attention  on  the  means, 
rather  than  the  end,  and  to  formalize  religion  by 
elevating  a  routine  of  external  behaviors  into  so 
prominent  a  place  in  spiritual  affairs. 

Such  progressive  externalizing  processes  did  widely 
mark  the  character  of  pulpit  inculcations.  Largely 
resulting  from  an  honest  but  mistaken  theory  of 
church-membership,  —  itself  accommodated  to  the 
exigencies  of  an  unforeseen  situation,  —  and  pro- 
moted by  a  declension  which  the  ministers  strove 
against,  but  found  themselves  powerless  to  resist, 
the  type  of  religious  life  of  the  period  now  in  ques- 
tion took  on  an  aspect  of  formality  and  indifference 
which  certainly  would  have  filled  the  first  colonists 
with  amazement. 

Taking  all  these  things  together,  —  the  degen- 
erative tendencies  of  frontier  and  new-settlement 
life ;  of  Indian  warfare  and  political  anxiety ;  of 
depressing  financial  disasters  and  alarming  pre- 
vailing disease ;  of  religious  controversies  and  the 
contentions  of  sects  fought  out,  not  in  the  arena  of 
moral  debate  only,  but  in  the  legislature,  the  court- 
room, and  the  jail  ;  and,  adding  to  these  things  a 
vicious  theory  of  the  Church  itself  on  the  part  of  that 
body  which  represented  the  great  and  authoritative 
portion   of  the  community  as  a  whole,  —  is  there 


66  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

any  reason  to  wonder  that  the  period  under  present 
consideration  should  have  been  one  of  religious  de- 
cline ?  Such  a  decline  we  might  say,  apart  from 
other  causes  alone,  was  almost  deserved  as  a  proper 
retribution  for  the  uncharitable  severity  with  which 
conscientious  dissent  from  the  established  views  was 
treated  even  by  the  best  of  our  New  England  fathers. 
True,  the  principle  of  toleration  in  religious  matters 
was  almost  nowhere  recognized  in  those  days.  Eng- 
land had  none  of  it.  Holland  alone  had  it  in  con- 
siderable extent.  And  it  is  the  very  point  of  sever- 
est indictment  against  our  New  England  intolerance 
that  many  of  the  planters  of  these  colonies  had  en- 
joyed the  benefit  of  Holland's  liberality  in  these 
matters,  and  ought  to  have  learned  a  little  of  the 
lesson  of  a  forbearance  they  had  needed  so  much  in 
their  English  home,  and  which  the  experience  of 
some  of  them  on  Dutch  soil  might  have  taught 
them  how  to  exercise.  If  religion  itself  declined, 
we  cannot  acquit  them  of  all  responsibility  for  its 
decadence. 

Plenty  of  evidence  remains  of  the  earnest  struggle 
of  the  great  body  of  the  ministry  of  that  day  against 
a  condition  of  things  that  it  was  almost  powerless  to 
resist.  It  was  not  Higginson  and  Hubbard  only  who 
discerned  and  deplored  the  low  estate  of  religion; 
the  same  lament  appears  in  almost  every  utterance 
which  has  come  down  to  us  from  that  time.  In 
1668  Rev.  William  Stoughton  preached  the  Election 
Sermon  before  the  governor  and  legislature  of  Mas- 
sachusetts.    In  it  he  said  :  — 


THE  DECLINE  RECOGNIZED.  67 

*'  0  what  a  sad  Metamor pilosis  hath  there  of  later 
years  passed  upon  us  in  these  Churches  and  Planta- 
tions? .  .  .  Alas!  how  is  New  England  in  danger  this 
day  to  be  lost  even  in  New-England  ?  To  be  buried  in 
its  own  Ruines?  .  .  .  The  first  generation  have  been 
ripened  time  after  time,  and  most  of  them  geathred  in 
SiS  shocks  of  corn  Oi  their  season.  .  .  .  Whilest  they  lived 
their  Piety  and  Zeal,  their  Light  and  Life,  their  Coun- 
sels and  Authority,  their  Examples  and  Awe  kept  us 
right,  and  drew  us  on  in  the  good  wayes  of  God,  to  pro- 
fess and  practise  the  best  things  ;  but  now  that  they  are 
dead  and  gone,  Ah  how  doth  the  unsoundness,  the  rot- 
tenness and  hypocrisie  of  too  many  amongst  us  make  it 
self  known,  as  it  was  with  Joash  after  the  death  of 
Jehojadah.  ...  It  is  a  sad  name  to  be  styled  Children 
that  are  Corrupters ;  but  are  we  not  indeed  many  of  us 
corrupted^  and  which  is  far  worse  Corrupters'? '' 

Preaching  the  next  year,  on  a  similar  occasion, 
before  the  General  Court  of  Plymouth  Colony  Rev. 
Thomas  Walley  said  :  — 

"  Are  we  not  this  Day  making  Graves  for  all  our 
Blessings  and  Comforts?  Have  we  not  Reason  to  ex- 
pect that  e're  long  our  ^Nfourners  will  go  up  and  down 
and  say,  How  is  New  England  fallen  ?  The  Land  that 
was  a  Land  0/ Holiness,  hath  lost  her  Holiness?  That 
was  a  Land  of  Righteousness,  hath  lost  her  Righteous- 
ness ?  That  ivas  a  Land  of  Peace,  hath  lost  her  Peace  ? 
That  ivas  a  Land  0/ Liberty,  is  now  in  sore  Bondage?  " 

In  May,  1670,  Rev.  Samuel  Danforth  was  the 
preacher  of  the  Election  Sermon  in  Massachusetts. 


68  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

He   called   on  the  magistrates,   clergy  and  people 
assembled  on  the  occasion  to  consider :  — 

"Whether  we  have  not  in  a  great  measure  forgotten 
our  Errand  into  the  Wilderness.  You  have  solemnly 
professed  before  God,  Angels  and  Men,  that  the  Cause 
of  your  leaving  your  Country,  Kindred  and  Fathers 
houses,  and  transporting  your  selves  with  your  Wives, 
Little  Ones  and  Substance  over  the  vast  Ocean  into  this 
waste  and  howling  Wilderness,  was  your  Liberty  to  walk 
in  the  Faith  of  the  Gospel  ivith  all  good  Conscience,  accord- 
ing to  the  Order  of  the  Gospel,  and  your  enjoyment  of  the 
pure  Worship  of  God  according  to  his  Institution,  with- 
out humane  Mixtures  and  Impositions.  Now  let  us  sadly 
consider  whether  our  ancient  and  primitive  affections  to 
the  Lord  Jesus,  his  glorious  Gospel,  his  pure  and  Spirit- 
ual Worship  and  the  Order  of  his  House  remain.  .  .  . 
Let  us  call  to  remembrance  the  former  dayes,  and  con- 
sider whether  it  was  not  theti  better  ivith  us,  then  it  is  now. 

"  In  our  first  and  best  times  the  Kingdome  of  Heaven 
brake  in  upon  us  with  a  holy  violence,  and  every  man 
pressed  into  it.  What  mighty  efficacy  and  power  had 
the  clear  and  faithful  dispensation  of  the  Gospel  upon 
your  hearts?  how  affectionately  and  zealously  did  you 
entertain  the  Kingdome  of  God?  How  careful  were 
you,  even  all  sorts,  young  and  old,  high  and  low,  to 
take  hold  of  the  opportunities  of  your  Spiritual  good 
and  edification  ?,  ordering  your  secular  affahs  ...  so 
as  not  to  interfere  with  your  general  Calling.  .  .  .  Then 
had  the  Churches  rest,  throughout  the  several  Colonies, 
and  were  edifed :  and  loalking  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord, 
and  in  the  comfort  of  the  Jwly  Ghost,  were  multiplied. 
O  how  your  Faith  grew  exceedingly!    you  proceeded 


THE  DECLINE  RECOGNIZED.  69 

from  faith  to  faith,  from  a  less  to  a  greater  degree  and 
measure,  growing  up  in  Him  who  is  our  Head,  and  re- 
ceiving abundance  of  grace  and  of  the  gift  of  right- 
eousness. .  .  .  O  how  your  Love  and  Charity  towards 
each  other  abounded!  O  what  comfort  of  Love!  .  .  . 
what  a  holy  Sympathy  in  Crosses  and  Comforts,  weep- 
ing with  those  that  wept,  and  rejoycing  with  those  that 
rejoyced ! 

"  But  who  is  there  left  among  you,  that  saw  these 
Churches  in  their  first  glory.,  and  how  do  you  see  them 
now  f  Are  they  not  in  your  eyes  in  comparison  thereof, 
as  nothincj'i  ...  Is  not  the  Temper,  Complexion  and 
Countenance  of  the  Churches  strangely  altered?  Doth 
not  a  careless,  remis,  flat,  dry,  cold,  dead  frame  of  spirit 
grow  upon  us  secretly,  strongly,  prodigiously?  They 
that  have  Ordinances,  are  as  though  they  had  none ; 
and  they  that  hear  the  Word,  as  though  they  heard 
it  not ;  and  they  that  pray,  as  though  they  prayed  not ; 
and  they  that  receive  Sacraments  as  though  they  re- 
ceived them  not ;  and  they  that  are  exercised  in  the 
holy  things,  using  them  by  the  by,  as  matters  of  cus- 
tome  and  ceremony  .  .  .  Pride,  Contention,  Worldliness, 
Covetousness,  Luxury,  Drunkenness  and  Uncleanness 
break  in  like  a  flood  upon  us,  and  good  men  grow  cold 
in  their  love  to  God  and  to  one  another." 

In  16T8,  Dr.  Increase  Mather,  pastor  in  Boston, 
and  soon  after  President  of  Harvard  College,  also, 
published  a  treatise  entitled,  "  Pray  for  the  Rising 
Generation,"  in  which  he  said  :  — 

"  Prayer  is  needful  on  this  Account,  in  that  Conver- 
sions are  becoming  rare  in  this  Age  of  the  "World.   They 


70  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

that  have  their  Thoughts  exercised  in  discerning  Things 
of  this  Nature  have  had  sad  apprehensions  with  refer- 
ence to  this  Matter  ;  That  the  Work  of  Conversion  hath 
been  at  a  great  Stand  in  the  World.  In  the  last  Age,  in 
the  Days  of  our  Fathers,  iu  other  Parts  of  the  World, 
scarce  a  Sermon  j^reacJied  but  some  evidently  converted^ 
and  sometimes  Hundreds  in  a  Sermon.  Which  of  us 
can  say  we  have  seen  the  like  ?  Clear ^  sound  Conver- 
sions are  not  frequent  in  some  Congregations.  The 
Body  of  the  risiyig  Geyieration  is  a  poor^  ijerishing.,  un- 
converted, and  (except  the  Lord  pour  down  his  Spirit) 
an  undone  Generation.  Many  that  are  Profane,  Drunk- 
ards, Swearers,  Lacivious,  Scoffers  at  the  Power  of  God- 
liness, Despisers  of  those  that  are  Good,  Disobedient. 
Others  that  are  only  civil,  and  outwardly  conformed  to 
good  Order  by  Reason  of  their  Education,  but  never 
knew  what  the  New  Birth  means." 

So  little,  however,  had  matters  improved,  twenty- 
two  years  later,  that  Increase  Mather  wrote  again 
in  his  "  Order  of  the  Gospel,"  published  in  1700  :  — 

"  If  the  begun  Apostacy  should  proceed  as  fast  the 
next  thirty  years  as  it  has  done  these  last,  surely  it 
will  come  to  that  in  New  England  (Except  the  Gospel 
itself  Depart  with  the  Order  of  it)  that  the  most  Con- 
scientious People  therein,  will  think  themselves  con- 
cerned to   gather  Churches  out  of  Churches." 

Rev.  Samuel  Torrey  of  Weymouth,  Massachusetts, 
preaching  the  Election  Sermon  in  May,  1683,  called 
on  his  hearers  to  consider :  — 

"  That  there  hath  been  a  vital  decay,  a  decay  upon  the 
very  Vitals  of  Religion,  by  a  deep  declension  in  the  Life, 


THE  DECLINE  RECOGNIZED.  71 

and  Power  of  it;  that  there  is  ah'ea,dy  a  great  Death 
upon  Religion ;  little  more  left  than  a  name  to  live ;  that 
the  Things  lohich  remain,,  are  ready  to  dye;  and  that  we 
are  in  great  danger  of  dying  together  with  it." 

After  summoning  attention  to  the  "■  dying  of  Re- 
ligion "  in  "  Churches "  and  in  the  "  Hearts  of  its 
Professors,"  he  goes  on  :  — 

' '  How  is  Religion  dying  in  Families !  through  the 
neglect  of  the  religious  Service  and  Worship  of  God, 
and  of  the  religious  Education  of  Children  and  Youth 
in  Families.  Truly,  here,  and  hereby,  Religion  first  re- 
ceived its  death's  wound.  Hence  Religion  is  dying  in 
all  other  Societies,  among  all  Orders  and  Degrees  of 
men,  in  all  ways  of  Converse,  both  Civil  and  Ecclesias- 
tical. O  there  is  little,  or  nothing  of  the  Life  of  Re- 
ligion to  be  seen,  or  appearing  either  in  the  Frame,  or 
Way ;  Hearts  or  Lives  of  the  generality  of  the  Profes- 
sors of  it." 

So,  too,  it  looked  to  Rev.  Samuel  Willard,  preach- 
ing, in  1700,  on  the  "  Peril  of  the  Times  Displayed," 
and  looking  from  the  standpoint  of  his  Vice-Presi- 
dency of  Harvard  College,  as  well  as  from  the  pulpit 
of  the  South  Church  in  Boston.     He  says  :  — 

"  How  few  thorough  Conversions  are  to  be  observed? 
How  scarce  and  seldom  ?  Men  go  from  Ordinance  to 
Ordinance,  and  from  year  to  year,  and  it  may  be  they 
are  sometimes  a  little  touched,  awakened,  affected,  .  .  . 
but  how  few  are  there  who  are  effectually  and  thoroughly 
turned  from  sin  to  God.  .  .  .  Bad  Symptoms  .  .  .  are 
upon  the  rising   Generation.     It  hath  been  a  frequent 


72  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

observation,  that  if  one  Generation  begins  to  decline, 
the  next  that  followeth  usually  grows  worse,  and  so  on, 
till  God  poureth  out  his  Spirit  again  upon  them ;  .  .  . 
The  decayes  which  we  do  already  languish  under,  are 
sad,  and  what  tokens  are  there  on  our  Children  that  it 
is  like  to  be  better  hereafter?  .  .  .  God  be  thanked, 
that  there  are  so  many  among  them  that  promise  well. 
.  .  .  But  alas,  how  doth  vanity  and  a  fondness  after 
new  things  abound  among  them  ?  how  do  young  per- 
sons grow  weary  of  the  strict  profession  of  their  fathers, 
and  become  strong  disputants  for  those  things  which 
their  progenitors  forsook  a  pleasant  Land  for  the  avoid- 
ance of !  " 

Nor  were  signs  of  such  declension  of  the  religious 
life  at  all  limited  to  the  Massachusetts  and  Plymouth 
colonies.  In  Connecticut,  judged  by  all  tokens,  the 
decline  was  just  as  obvious. 

Rev.  Samuel  Mather  of  Windsor,  writing  in  1706, 
says  in  a  pastoral  letter  addressed  to  his  people :  ^  — 

"It  is  a  time  of  much  Degeneracy.  ...  In  great 
measure  we  in  this  Wilderness  have  lost  our  first  love. 
.  .  .  We  do  not  walk  with  God  as  our  Fathers  did,  and 
hence  we  are  continually  from  year  to  year  under  his 
Bebukes  one  way  or  other;  and  yet  alas,  we  turn  not 
unto  him  that  smites  us :  these  considerations  call  for  the 
utmost  of  our  endeavours,  for  the  reformation  of  what 
is  amiss  amongst  us  :  and  for  the  upholding  and  strength- 
ening of  what  yet  Remains^  and  is  perhaps  ready  to  dy.'* 

1  Dedicatory  Epistle  prefaced  to  The  Self-Justiciary  Convicted  and 
Condemned,  pp.  3,  4. 


THE  DECLINE  RECOGNIZED.  73 

Across  the  river,  at  East  Windsor  parish  in  the 
same  town,  Rev.  Timothy  Edwards  —  father  of  the 
great  Jonathan  —  preached  a  sermon  in  May,  1712,i 
on  a  topic  upon  which  the  condition  of  things  about 
them  impelled  the  ministers  of  Farmington,  Hartford, 
and  Windsor  unitedly  to  agree,  namely  :  "  Irrever- 
ence in  the  worship  of  God,  and  prophanation  of 
his  Glorious  and  fearfull  Name  by  Causless  Impre- 
cations and  Rash  Swearino-." 

Two  years  later,  in  1714,  Rev.  Samuel  Whitman 
of  Farmington  preached  the  Election  Sermon  in 
Hartford  before  the  General  Court.     In  it  he  said  : 

''  Is  not  Religion  Declining?  Indeed  'tis  too  Evident 
to  be  denied,  that  Religion  is  on  the  Wane  among  us, 
'T  is  Languishing  in  all  Parts  of  the  Land.  .  .  .  Time 
was  when  the  Ordinances  of  God  were  highly-Prized ; 
Our  Fathers  had  a  high  Esteem  of  them,  and  laid  great 
Weight  on  them.  .  .  .  But  now,  the  Love  of  many  to 
them  is  grown  Cold.  They  have  as  low  an  Esteem  of 
them,  as  the  Jews  had  of  their  Manna,  their  Bread  from 
Heaven,  when  it  fell  every  Night  about  their  Tents.  .  .  . 
Is  not  Religion  degenerated  into  an  empty  Form  ?  .  .  . 
Does  not  Pride  abound  among  us?  Not  meerly  Pride  in 
Apparel :  many  going  above  their  Estates  and  Degrees  : 
but  a  Haughtiness  of  Spirit  that  shows  itself  in  many 
ways ;  In  a  Contempt  of  those  that  are  by  far  their 
Betters:  The  Child  behaving  himself  Proudly  against 
the  Ancient,  the  Base  against  the  Honourable.  .  .  .  We 
are  risen  up  a  Generation  that  have  in  a  great  Measure 
forgot  the  Errand  of  our  Fathers." 

1  Stoughton's  Windsor  Farmes,  p.  139 


74  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

The  subject  and  the  spirit  of  the  Election  Sermon, 
preached  by  Stephen  Hosmer  of  East  Haddam  be- 
fore the  Connecticut  General  Court,  in  1720,  is  well 
indicated  in  its  title  :  "  A  People's  Living  in  Appear- 
ance and  Dying  in  Reality." 

Following  in  the  same  strain  on  a  like  legislative 
occasion,  in  1730,  Rev.  William  Russell  of  Middle- 
town,  from  the  text  in  Revelation :  "  I  have  some- 
what against  thee,  because  thou  hast  left  thy  first 
love,"  challenged  his  hearers  as  to  an  unquestionable 
fact : — 

"  Don't  the  generality  of  Professors  among  us  savour 
of  Vanity,  Worldliness,  Pride,  and  discover  great  Un- 
thoiightf Illness  of  God  ?  How  little  of  that  Seriousness, 
Humility  and  Heavenly-mindedness,  that  was  in  some 
of  our  Predecessors?  .  .  .  The  Country  improveth  in 
Knowledge  and  Skill  in  Worldly  business,  but  in 
Religious  Knowledge,  doth  it  not  manifestly  decay?  .  .  . 
And  is  there  not  abundance  of  Unrighteousness  & 
Unmercifulness  among  us?  Injustice  in  Prices,  delays 
and  dishonesty  in  Payments,  Deceit,  Falseness,  and  Un- 
faithfulness in  Bargains,  Contracts  and  Betrustments, 
griping  Usury,  Evading  and  Baffling  the  Laws  made  for 
the  Security  of  men  from  that  Oppression  ?  a  multitude 
of  Law  Suits,  Men  ready  to  take  one  another  by  the 
Throat?" 

We  should  be  glad  to  consider  such  melancholy 
utterances  as  the  somewhat  professional  expressions 
of  men  who,  because  of  their  clerical  positions,  were 
more  liable  than  others  to  take  a  somber  view  of 
the  moral  condition  of  the  community  about  them. 


PREVALENT  SINS.  75 

Unfortunately  we  cannot  do  this.  The  evidence  in 
all  quarters  —  civil  proclamations,  court  procedures, 
jail  accounts  —  is  against  so  lenient  a  conclusion. 
Well-niiih  all  old  church  records  bear  witness  to  an 
almost  incredible  laxity  of  morals  in  the  regions 
with  which  they  have  to  do.  They  are  melancholy 
reading,  except  for  the  fact  that  they  plainly  indi- 
cate that  strenuous  attempts  were  made  to  stem 
the  evils  which  they  reveal  as  existing.  The  sins 
chiefly  disclosed  by  them  are  those  of  intemperance, 
lying,  slander,  and  licentiousness;  the  latter  es- 
pecially prevalent  among  the  younger  parts  of  the 
community,  on  that  border-ground  of  half-way  rela- 
tionship to  the  Church  which  has  already  been  de- 
scribed. It  is  a  painful  matter  to  refer  to  ;  but  so 
marked  a  blemish  on  the  moral  and  religious  life  of 
the  time  cannot  be  overlooked. 

A  very  frequent  antecedent  to  admission  to  the 
covenant,  or  of  advancement  to  full  communion, 
was  public  confession  of  repentance  for  sins  of 
unchastity  previously  committed.  Almost  all  old 
church  records  preserve  more  or  less  instances  of 
the  kind  ;  some  of  them  very  many. 

One  occasion,  doubtless,  of  the  necessity  of  taking 
cognizance  of  misbehaviors  in  this  most  rudimen- 
tary point  of  morals,  was  that  curious  custom  — 
long  happily  obsolete  in  New  England  at  least,  but 
once,  owing  probably  to  meager  sitting-room  accom- 
modations and  inadequately  warmed  houses,  largely 
prevalent  in  these  commonwealths  —  the  custom  of 
young  people  prosecuting  what  was  intended  to  be. 


76  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

and  doubtless  generally  was,  a  proper  acquaintance 
and  courtship,  tucked  up  together  in  a  bed.  Of 
course  the  young  companions  were  presumably 
clothed  in  their  ordinary  attire;  and  nothing  was 
further  from  the  intention  of  the  establishers  or  the 
promoters  of  this  curious  social  usage  than  the  en- 
dangerment  of  morals.  Attempts  have  been  made  to 
ascribe  this  custom  to  only  the  very  lowest  order  of 
people.  But  this  is  idle.  Jonathan  Edwards,  preach- 
ing in  his  own  pulpit  in  that  always  rather  aristo- 
cratic New  England  township  of  Northampton, 
bluntly  says:  ^  — 

"  I  desire  that  certain  customs  that  are  common 
among  young  people  in  the  country,  and  have  been  so  a 
long  time,  may  be  examined  by  those  rules  that  have 
been  mentioned.  That  custom  in  particular,  of  young 
people  of  different  sexes  lying  in  bed  together !  How- 
ever light  is  made  of  it,  and  however  ready  persons  may 
be  to  laugh  at  its  being  condemned  .  .  .  whoever  wisely 
considers  the  matter  must  say,  that  this  custom  of  this 
country  .  .  .  has  been  one  main  thing  that  has  led 
to  that  growth  of  uncleanness  that  has  been  in  the 
land." 

The  evidence  is  only  too  abundant  that  the  cus- 
tom was  one  of  extensive  prevalence,  and  that  it 
was  the  unhappy,  however  unintended,  occasion  of 
the  tarnishing  of  multitudes  of  New  England  church 
records,   and  the    blotting   of   many   a  fair   name 

1   Works  (ed.  1809),  vol.  vii.  p.  150. 


LAX  MORALITY.  77 

among  not  the  least  honored  of  our  New  England 
families.^ 

Certainly,  with  the  increase  of  drunkenness,  pro- 
fanity, and  licentiousness,  which  all  available 
sources  of  information  plainly  indicate  as  marking 
this  period,  a  great  change  had  taken  place  from  a 
condition  of  things  which  enabled  the  author  of 
"New  Englands  First  Fruits"  to  say,  in  1648: 
*'  One  may  live  there  from  year  to  year,  and  not 
see  a  drunkard,  hear  an  oath,  or  see  a  beggar  ;  "  or 
which  justified  Hugh  Peter,  on  his  return  to  England 
from  his  American  home,  in  saying,  in  a  sermon 
preached  before  Parliament,  the  Westminster  As- 
sembly of  Divines,  and  the  Corporation  of  the  City 
of  London,  in  1646 :  "  I  have  lived  seven  years  in  a 
country  where  I  never  saw  a  beggar,  nor  heard  an 
oath,  nor  looked  upon  a  drunkard." 

But  there  was  one  token  of  a  certain  chans-e  in  the 
religious  feeling  of  the  people,  extending  progress- 
ively through  this  period,  which,  partly  because  it 
was  of  a  more  interior  and  elusive  character,  and 
partly  because  it  was  in  one  instance  at  least  con- 
nected with  a  conspicuous  ecclesiastical  movement, 
may  appropriately  claim  a  moment's  more  definite 
notice. 

i  This  unpleasant,  but  historically  practical,  subject  has  been 
treated  of  with  suitable  discretion  in  a  little  volume  entitled, 
Bundlinq ;  its  Origin,  Progress  and  Decline  in  America,  Albany,  1871, 
by  H.  R.  Stiles,  M.D.  All  readers  of  old  church  records  will,  how- 
ever, acknowledge  that  Dr.  Stiles  has  not  over-stated  the  gravity  of 
the  practice  in  question  and  its  prevalence  at  the  period  reviewed. 


78  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

It  was  remarked  in  the  previous  lecture  that  the 
practice  of  giving  "  relations "  of  experience,  as  a 
preparatory  step  in  entering  into  church-member- 
ship, was  universal  in  early  New  England  history. 
These  relations,  as  was  then  said,  were  often  of  the 
most  minute  and  introspective  kind.  The  practice, 
initiated  in  a  period  of  great  religious  emotion  and 
naturally  expressive  of  it,  was  continued  after  that 
emotion  had  largely  cooled  ;  indeed,  in  modified  and 
various  forms,  it  continues  generally  among  most  of 
our  churches  to  this  day. 

But  there  gradually  developed,  as  the  conditions 
of  feeling  changed,  an  alteration  in  the  minds  of 
many  as  to  the  expediency  and  necessity  of  such 
presentations,  before  the  eyes  or  ears  of  others,  of 
the  processes  of  men's  minds  and  hearts  in  personal 
religious  experience.  And,  in  1699,  at  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  new  church  in  Boston  —  the  Brattle 
Street  Church  —  among  other  innovating  proce- 
dures which  threw  the  ecclesiastical  circles  of  that 
region  into  very  considerable  turmoil,  was  an  inno- 
vation on  this  time-honored  and  generally  accepted 
usage. 

The  eighth  article  of  the  Declaration  of  the  new 
church  was  as  follows  :  — 

*'Butwe  assume  not  to  our  selves  to  impose  upon 
any  a  Publick  Relation  of  their  Experiences ;  however 
if  any  one  think  himself  bound  in  Conscience  to  make 
such  a  Relation,  let  him  do  it.  For  we  conceive  it 
sufficient,  if  the  Pastor  pubUckly  declare   himself   sat- 


RELATIONS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  79 

isfied   in  the  person   offered   to   our   Communion,    and 
seasonably  Propound  him."  ^ 

This  innovation  awoke  considerable  opposition  on 
the  part  of  the  general  body  of  the  Massachusetts 
clergy,  and  would  very  likely  have  been  fruitful  of 
more  lasting  consequences  had  not  the  pastors  of 
the  Brattle  Street  Church  been,  as  events  proved, 
successively  evangelical  and  devout-hearted  men; 
so  that,  notwithstanding  relations  may  have  been 
formally  dispensed  with,  there  is  good  reason  to 
suppose  that  pastoral  solicitude  and  inquiry  practi- 
cally secured  in  that  church  (at  least  while  Colman 
and  the  elder  Cooper  lived)  all  that  was  secured 
by  the  older  method  in  the  other  churches  of  the 
time.2 

The  spirit  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  requirement 
of  such  relations  was,  however,  abroad.  Relations 
were  still  customarily  presented  by  applicants  for 
church-membership ;  but  their  tone  was  greatly 
modified.  A  less  strenuous  type  of  individual  feel- 
ing, as  compared  with  that  expected  in  the  early 
days  of  these  churches,  was  regarded  as  sufficient 
evidence  of  qualification  for  church-fellowship.  The 
state   of    public   sentiment   about   the   matter   was 

1  See  Lothrop's  Brattle  Street  Churchy  pp.  20-26,  for  the  somewhat 
warlike  "  Manifesto  or  Declaration^  Set  forth  by  the  Undertakers  of 
the  New  Church  now  Erected  in  Boston,  in  New  England,  November 
IT^  1699." 

2  See  Mr.  Brooks  Adams's  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,  pp. 
237-254,  for  an  altogether  amusingly  exaggerated  accotmt  of  the 
significance  of  the  whole  Brattle  Street  transaction. 


80  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

probably  fairly  indicated  in  the  letter  written  to 
his  people  in  Windsor,  Connecticut,  by  the  faithful 
though  invalid  Samuel  Mather,  in  1706,  which  has 
already  been  quoted  from  in  another  connection. 
He  says  :  ^  — 

"  I  might  particularly  add  a  few  Words  about  a 
matter  concerning  which  there  is  a  growing  agitation 
in  diverse  Places;  &  perhaps  some  in  This  Place  are 
not  so  well  satis fyed,  viz.  Concerning  Persons  making 
of  a  Relation ;  or  giving  some  account  of  the  Work  of 
Grace  upon  their  hearts,  in  order  unto  their  being 
admitted  into  full  communion  in  the  Churches  where 
they  dwell.  It  is  well  known  what  hath  been,  and  what 
is  the  practice  of  the  Church  in  this  place." 

And  then,  in  advocacy  of  the  old  and  once  spon- 
taneous way,  he  goes  on  :  — 

"  I  might  tell  you  how  that  One  Relation  hath  begot 
another:  and  how  One  told  me  some  years  ago,  that 
among  the  scores  that  he  had  heard  read  in  Publick,  he 
had  never  heard  one,  but  what  made  him  to  tremble, 
because,  in  them  all  he  found  matter  of  Conviction  in 
coming  short  of  any  such  Work,  as  some  others  had 
experience  of." 

All  which  necessity  of  argumentation  only  shows 
the  reality  of  the  change  that  had  come  over  the 
general  tone  of  religious  feeling  since  the  former 
times. 

On  the  whole,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  were, 
unquestionably,  as  truly  devout  men  and  women  as 

1  Preface  to  Self -Justiciary,  pp.  16,  17. 


EFFECTS  OF  THE  DECLINE.  81 

in  religion's  earlier  days  in  New  England,  and  that 
the  endeavors  of  many  godly  ministers  to  stem  the 
downward  tendency  of  affairs  were  really  heroic, 
there  can  be  no  question  that  the  period  which  we 
have  been  reviewing  was  one  of  religious  declension 
throughout  New  England.  It  was  marked  by  a  less- 
ened intensity  of  spiritual  experience  in  the  really 
devout,  and  by  a  far  greater  indifference  to  the  sanc- 
tions of  truth  and  the  demands  of  duty  in  that  large 
body  of  people  who,  while  nominally  connected  with 
the  church  by  covenant,  made  no  pretension  to  a  re- 
generate life.  Outward  questions  of  ecclesiastical 
administration,  of  politics,  of  war,  of  land  acquisition 
and  new  settlement,  distracted  people's  minds  from 
the  concentrated  attention  once  given  so  earnestly 
to  religious  concerns.  The  corrupting  influence  of 
association  with  Indians  —  who  were  always  easily 
seduced  with  drink,  and  whose  women  were  often 
open  to  solicitations  of  their  chastity  —  undermined 
the  morals  of  a  great  number  of  young  and  middle- 
aged  men  in  all  the  provinces  ;  while  war  and  border 
conflicts  roughened  and  demoralized  many  others, 
exposed  to  camp  life  and  its  inevitable  temptations. 
Formality  in  the  churches  had  been  developed,  to  a 
degree  at  which  the  fathers  would  have  wondered,  by 
the  prominence  which  had  been  attached  to  baptism 
as  the  means  of  keeping  a  people  in  visible  covenant 
with  God,  even  when  destitute  of  the  actual  power  of 
godliness.  And,  while  there  had  been  no  largely 
recognizable  change  in  the  doctrinal  instructions  of 
the  pulpit, —  as,  indeed,  there  had  been  little  interest 

6 


82  THE  PURITAN  DECLINE. 

in  doctrine,  as  such,  since  the  fathers  brought  a 
generally  accepted  type  of  it  to  these  shores,  —  there 
had  been  an  insensible  falling  off  in  the  strenuous- 
ness  of  the  presentations  of  doctrinal  teachings ;  an 
increasing  insistence  on  the  value  of  religious  ob- 
servances ;  and  an  enhancing  emphasis  —  for  which 
there  certainly  was  need  —  on  inculcating  what  the 
leading  spirits  of  the  era  which  we  are  next  to  con- 
sider were  accustomed  to  stigmatize  as  the  "  mere 
Arminian  moralities  "  of  life. 

The  sudden  awakening  from  this  apparent  torpor 
of  the  religious  sense,  in  a  period  shortly  to  follow, 
will  be  the  topic  of  the  next  lecture. 


III. 

THE  "  GREAT  AWAKENING  "  AND  ITS 
SEQUELS. 

From  the  condition  of  formalism  and  declension 
which,  to  so  great  an  extent,  marked  the  religious 
life  of  New  England  for  upwards  of  two  generations 
previous  to  1740,  the  churches  were  aroused,  about 
that  date,  by  a  spiritual  quickening  of  so  distinct 
and  pervasive  a  character  that  it  has  passed  into 
history  as  the  "  Great  Awakening."  Some  antic- 
ipatory signs  of  such  possible  revival  of  spiritual 
energies  had  been  manifested  here  and  there  at 
intervals  for  some  years  previous. 

Even  as  early  as  the  winter  of  1704-05,  under 
the  earnest  ministry  of  Rev.  Samuel  Danforth  of 
Taunton,  Massachusetts,  a  remarkable  religious 
quickening  occurred  in  that  place. 

Writing  under  date  of  February  20th,  Mr.  Dan- 
forth says : ^ 

'*  We  are  much  encouraged  by  an  unusual  and  amaz- 
ing Impression.^  made  by  God's  Spirit  on  all  Sorts 
among  us,  especially  on  the  young  Men  and  Women. 
It 's  almost  incredible  how  many  visit  me  with  Dis- 
coveries of  the  extreme  Distress  of  Mind  they   are   in 

1  Christian  History,  June  4,  1743. 


84  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING." 

about  their  Spiritual  Condition.  .  .  .  We  are  both, 
Church,  and  all  Inhabitants  to  reneio  the  Covenant  for 
Beformation,  this  Week;  which  this  people  made  with 
God,  the  last  Philip  Indian  War.'' 

In  the  following  March,  Mr.  Danforth  writes  again, 
telling  how  "  three  hundred  Names  "  were,  at  the 
meeting  appointed,  "  given  in  to  list  under  Christ, 
against  the  Sins  of  the  Times  ;  "  and  that "  a  hundred 
more,"  detained  from  that  meeting,  could  also  cov- 
enant in  like  manner.  But  it  rather  surprises  us 
that,  with  this  general  stir  in  the  community  and 
this  readiness  to  make  engagement  against  the 
"  Sins  of  the  Times,"  Mr.  Danforth  is  able  only  to 
report  fourteen  persons  as  presenting  themselves 
for  church  covenant,  and  but  part  of  these  for  full 
communion. 

Similar  stirrings  of  religious  emotion  occurred 
several  times  in  the  ministry  of  Rev.  Solomon  Stod- 
dard of  Northampton  ;  conspicuously  in  1712  and 
1718,  when  we  are  told  ^  "  the  bigger  Part  of  the 
young  People  in  the  Town,  seemed  to  be  mainly 
concerned  for  their  eternal  Salvation."  In  the  year 
1721,  the  town  of  Windham,  Connecticut,  under 
the  pastoral  care  of  Rev.  Samuel  Whiting,  was 
visited  by  a  marked  awakening. 

More  general,  though,  it  is  to  be  apprehended, 
more  ephemeral  in  its  results,  was  the  stirring  of 
religious  feeling  through  a  considerable  part  of  New 
England,  occasioned  by  the  earthquake  of  October 
29,  1727. 

1   Christian  History,  June  4,  1743. 


ANTICIPATORY  QUICKENINGS.  85 

Writing  of  the  effect  of  this  startling  event  in  the 
region  under  their  observation,  Rev.  Messrs.  Sewall, 
Prince,  Webb,  and  Cooper  of  Boston,  say  -}  — 

'*  When  God  arose  and  shook  the  Earth,  his  loud 
Call  to  us  in  that  amazing  Providence,  was  foUow'd, 
so  far  as  Man  can  judge,  with  the  still  Voice  of  his 
Spirit,  in  which  he  was  present  to  awaken  many  .  .  . 
and  to  turn  not  a  few  from  Sin  to  God  in  a  thorough 
Conversion." 

Nevertheless,  the  reverend  writers  feel  compelled 
to  record  that  "  much  the  greater  Part  of  those 
whom  God's  Terrors  affrighted "  made  "  speedy 
Return  to  former  Sins." 

Much  more  prophetic  of  the  general  awakening 
which  was  to  come  was  the  revival  at  Northampton 
and  many  adjacent  towns  in  Massachusetts,  as  well 
as  in  several  towns  in  Connecticut,  in  the  years 
1734, 1735,  and  1736. 

The  occurrences  in  Northampton  were  probably 
the  most  striking  in  themselves  of  the  phenomena 
of  this  movement,  as  certainly  they  are  the  best 
known  by  reason  of  the  eminent  powers  of  observa- 
tion and  narrative  possessed  by  Jonathan  Edwards, 
their  delineator.  Of  the  results  in  that  place  Mr. 
Edwards  says  :  ^  — 

"  If  I  may  be  allowed  to  declare  anything  that  ap- 
pears to  me  probable  in  a  Thing  of  this  Nature,  I  hope 
that  more  than  three  Hundred  Souls,  were  savingly 
brought  home  to  Christ,  in  this  Town,  in  the  space  of 
half  a  Tearr 

1  Christian  History,  June  11,  1743.  2  JUd.,  June  18,  1743. 


86  THE   ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

He  speaks  of  admitting  "  about  an  hundred  "  to 
communion  before  one  Sacrament  occasion,  and 
'' four-score  "  at  another  ;  but  he  records  in  con- 
nection with  this  statement,  what  the  careful  reader 
of  his  narrative  will  do  well  to  remember,  that  "  it 
is  not  the  Custom  here,  as  it  is  in  many  other 
Churches  in  this  Country,  to  make  a  credible  Re- 
lation of  their  inward  Experiences  the  Ground  of 
Admission  to  the  Lord's  Supper."  And  not  only 
had  relations  of  experience  been  abandoned  under 
the  ministry  of  Mr.  Stoddard,— Mr.  Edwards's 
grandfather  and  predecessor, —  but  Northampton 
was  the  center  from  which  the  Stoddardean  doctrine 
of  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  a  hopefully  converting 
ordinance  for  unregenerate  persons,  had  been  pro- 
mulgated,; which  doctrine  was  not  repudiated  till 
thirteen  years  later  by  Mr.  Edwards.  So  that  the 
admission  of  so  many  as  were  received  to  the  sacra- 
ment in  the  Northampton  revival  of  1735  probably 
signified  less  than  it  might  have  done  under  other 
circumstances  and  in  some  other  places. 

Still,  this  visitation  of  revival  influences,  which  at 
this  period  reached  the  whole  line  of  river  towns 
from  Northfield,  Massachusetts,  to  Windsor,  Con- 
necticut, and  which  in  the  latter  colony  touched 
places  as  wide  apart  as  Stratford,  New  Haven., 
Groton,  Lebanon  and  Coventry,  was  a  fact  of  such 
interest  that  it  attracted  the  attention  of  devout 
men  in  the  home  country  ;  and  a  narrative  of  it, 
written  by  Mr.  Edwards  at  the  request  of  Rev.  Drs. 
John  Guyse  and  Isaac  Watts,  was  extensively  cir- 


WHITEFIELD'S   COMING.  87 

culated  in  England  and  Scotland,  as  well  as  in 
America. 

The  attention  of  English  Christians  being  turned 
thus  to  American  religious  affairs,  and  prayer  for 
American  religious  welfare  becoming  as  it  had 
never  been  before  a  feature  of  English  desire,  the 
way  may  be  said  to  have  been  in  a  manner  prepared, 
both  at  home  and  abroad,  for  that  wider  religious 
movement  which  we  know  as  the  "  Great  Awaken- 
ing "  in  which  an  eminent  English  evangelist  was  to 
perform  so  conspicuous  a  part. 

The  announced  purpose  of  these  lectures  being  to 
subordinate  historic  narration  to  the  business  of  de- 
lineating the  spiritual  conditions  of  the  religious  life 
at  the  various  periods  under  review,  the  attempt 
will  not  be  made  carefully  to  follow  the  career  of 
Mr.  Whitefield,  or  minutely  to  detail  the  incidents 
which  attended  his  course  from  his  arrival  at  New- 
port, Rhode  Island,  in  September,  1740,  onward 
through  his  successive  visits  to  New  England  until 
his  death  at  Newburyport  in  1T70. 

The  story  is,  indeed,  a  picturesque  one,  but  it  is 
reasonably  familiar.  It  is  enough  for  the  purposes 
at  present  in  view  to  note  how,  on  his  first  pilgrim- 
age through  these  provinces  in  1740,  he  was 
attended  by  almost  universal  demonstrations  of 
popular  acclaim  ;  was  welcomed  by  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  ministers  with  cordiality  to  their 
pulpits  ;  and  how  by  the  fervor  of  his  impassioned 
oratory  he  stirred  the  general  masses  of  the  com- 
munities in  which,  or  near  to  which,  he  delivered 


88  THE  ^^ GREAT  AWAKENINGS 

his  enthusiastic  and  melting  discourses,  as  no  single 
voice  has  ever  stirred  New  England  people  since 
that  day.  Beginning  his  almost  royal  progress  at 
Newport,  preaching  at  Bristol  by  invitation  of  the 
General  Court,  he  was  conducted  to  Boston  by  the 
son  of  Governor  Belcher  of  Massachusetts,  specially 
sent  to  meet  him  for  the  purpose.  Here  the  elo- 
quent evangelist  was  received  into  the  churches  with 
almost  every  conceivable  token  of  admiration,  not 
to  say  of  adulation.  His  preaching  was  to  houses 
so  crowded  that  he  had  in  some  instances  to  be 
carried  through  a  window  over  people's  heads  to 
the  pulpit ;  his  audiences  numbering,  according  to 
his  estimate,  twenty  thousand  hearers  at  one  time 
on  the  Common.  From  Boston  he  extended  his  pil- 
grimage, accompanied  by  similar  demonstrations  of 
approval,  eastward  through  Salem,  Ipswich,  Marble- 
head,  Portsmouth,  and  York  ;  next  westward  through 
Sudbury,  Worcester,  Brookfield,  Hadley,  and  North- 
ampton ;  thence  southward  through  Springfield, 
Windsor,  Hartford,  Wethersfield,  Middletown,  and 
Wallingford  to  New  Haven;  and  so  on  through 
Milford,  Stratford,  Fairfield,  Stamford,  and  Rye  to 
New  York.  Certainly,  no  such  ecclesiastical  prog- 
ress, marked  by  victorious  oratory  and  popular 
enthusiasm,  is  anywhere  to  be  paralleled  in  New 
England's  religious  story. 

Perhaps  as  vivid  an  impression  of  the  general 
feeling  of  expectancy  and  wonder  among  the  com- 
mon sort  of  people  almost  everywhere  respecting 
Mr.  Whitefield   and  his   mission  as  can  easily  be 


WHITEFIELD'S  PREACHING,  89 

gained  may  be  derived  from  an  extract  from  a 
hitherto  unpublished  narrative  written  by  Nathan 
Cole  of  Kensington  parish,  Connecticut,  who  therein 
records  his  own  endeavors  to  put  himself  in  connec- 
tion with  the  great  evangelist. 

Mr.  Cole  was  a  farmer ;  he  became  a  Separatist 
from  the  ecclesiastical  establishment  of  Connecticut 
Congregationalism,  lived  to  old  age,  and  left  a  manu- 
script account  of  his  "  Spiritual  Travels  "  which  in- 
dicates at  once  his  illiteracy  as  to  the  schools,  and  his 
simple  sincerity  as  to  things  of  conscience  and  the 
religious  life.     He  says  :  — 

* '  Now  it  pleased  god  to  send  mr.  whitf eld  into  this 
land  &  my  bearing  of  his  preaching  at  Philadelphia  like 
one  of  the  old  aposels,  &  many  thousands  floocking  after 
him  to  hear  y*"  gospel  and  great  numbers  were  converted 
to  Christ,  i  felt  the  spirit  of  god  drawing  me  by  conviction 
i  longed  to  see  &  hear  him  &  wished  he  would  come 
this  way  and  i  soon  heard  he  was  come  to  new  york  & 
y^  jases  [Jerseys]  &  great  multitudes  flocking  after  him 
under  great  concern  for  their  Soule  &  many  converted 
wich  brought  on  my  concern  more  &  more  hoping 
soon  to  see  him  but  next  i  herd  he  was  on  long  iland 
&  next  at  boston  &  next  at  northampton  &  then  one 
morning  all  on  a  Suding  about  8  or  9  o  Clock  there  came 
a  messenger  &  said  mr.  whitfeld  preached  at  hartford  & 
weathersfield  yesterday  &  is  to  preach  at  middeltown  this 
morning^  at  10  o  clock  i  was  in  my  field  at  work  i 
dropt  my  tool  that  i  had  in  my  hand  &  run  home  &  run 
throu  my  house  &  bad  my  wife  get  ready  quick  to  goo  and 

1  The  date  was  October  23.  1740. 


90  THE  '^  GREAT  AWAKENINGS 

hear  mr.  whitfeld  preach  at  niiddeltown  &  run  to  my 
pasture  for  my  hors  with  all  my  might  fearing  i  should 
be  too  late  to  hear  him  i  brought  my  hors  home  & 
soon  mounted  &  took  my  wife  up  &  went  forward  as 
fast  as  i  thought  y®  hors  could  bear,  &  when  my  hors 
began  to  be  out  of  breath  i  would  get  down  &  put  my  wife 
on  y^  Saddel  &  bid  her  ride  as  fast  as  she  could  &  not 
Stop  or  Slak  for  me  except  i  bad  her  &  so  i  would 
run  untill  i  was  almost  out  of  breth  &  then  mount  my 
hors  again  &  so  i  did  severel  times  to  favour  my  hors 
we  improved  every  moment  to  get  along  as  if  we  was 
fleeing  for  our  lives  all  this  while  fearing  we  should  be 
too  late  to  hear  y''  Sarmon  for  we  had  twelve  miles  to 
ride  dubble  in  littel  more  then  an  hour  &  we  went 
round  by  the  upper  housen  parish  &  when  we  came 
within  about  half  a  mile  of  y^  road  that  comes  down 
from  hartford  weathersfield  &  stepney  to  middeltown 
on  high  land  i  saw  before  me  a  Cloud  or  fog  rising  i 
first  thought  off  from  y^  great  river  but  as  i  came 
nearer  y^  road  i  heard  a  noise  something  like  a  low  rum- 
bling thunder  &  i  presently  found  it  was  y*'  rumbling  of 
horses  feet  coming  down  y^  road  &  this  Cloud  was  a 
Cloud  of  dust  made  by  y°  running  of  horses  feet  it  arose 
some  rods  into  y*"  air  over  the  tops  of  y*"  hills  &  trees 
&  when  i  came  within  about  twenty  rods  of  y^  road  i 
could  see  men  &  horses  Sliping  along  in  y'^  Cloud  like 
shadows  &  when  i  came  nearer  it  was  like  a  stedy  streem 
of  horses  &  their  riders  scarcely  a  horse  more  then  his 
length  behind  another  all  of  a  lather  and  fome  with  swet 
ther  breath  rooling  out  of  their  noistrels  in  y*"  cloud  of 
dust  every  jump  every  hors  semed  to  go  with  all  his 
might  to  carry  his  rider  to  hear  y^  news  from  heaven  for 
y'^  saving  of  their  Souls  it  made  me  trembel  to  see  y^ 


WHITEFIELD'S  PREACHING.  91 

Sight  bow  y*"  world  was  in  a  strugle  i  found  a  vacance 
between  two  borses  to  Slip  in  my  bors  &  my  wife  said 
law  our  cloatbs  will  be  all  spoiled  see  bow  tbey  look 
for  tbey  was  so  covered  witb  dust  tbat  tbay  looked  all- 
most  all  of  a  coler  coats  &  bats  &  sbirts  &  borses 
We  went  down  in  y''  Streem  i  berd  no  man  speak  a 
word  all  y"'  way  tbree  mile  but  evry  one  presing 
forward  in  great  bast  &  wben  we  gat  down  to  y*"  old 
meating  bouse  tbare  was  a  great  multitude  it  was  said 
to  be  3  or  4000  of  people  asembled  together  we  gat  of 
from  our  borses  «&  shook  off  y''  dust  and  y*"  ministers 
was  then  coming  to  the  meating  bouse  i  turned  and 
looked  toward  y*"  great  river  &  saw  the  fery  boats  run- 
ning swift  forward  &  backward  bringing  over  loads 
of  people  y^  ores  roed  nimble  &  quick  every  thing 
men  borses  &  boats  all  seamed  to  be  struglin  for  life 
y*'  land  &  y^  banks  over  y^  river  lookt  black  witb 
people  &  borses  all  along  y'  12  miles  i  see  no  man  at 
work  in  bis  field  but  all  seamed  to  be  gone  —  wben  i 
see  mr.  wbitfeld  come  up  upon  y''  Scaffil  be  looked  al- 
most angellical  a  young  slim  slender  youth  before  some 
thousands  of  people  &  witb  a  bold  undainted  countenance 
&  my  bearing  how  god  was  witb  him  every  where  as  he 
came  along  it  solumnized  my  mind  &  put  me  in  a  trem- 
bling fear  before  be  began  to  preach  for  he  looked  as 
if  he  was  Cloatbed  with  authority  from  y*"  great  god, 
&  a  sweet  soUome  Solemnity  sat  upon  bis  brow  &  my 
hearing  him  preach  gave  me  a  heart  wound  by  gods 
blessing  my  old  foundation  was  broken  up  &  i  saw 
tbat  my  righteousness  would  not  save  me  then  i  was 
convinceLl  of  y^  doctrine  of  Election  &  went  right  to 
quareling  with  god  about  it  because  all  tbat  i  could  do 
would  not  save  me  &    be    bad   decreed  from  Eternity 


92  TBE  ^^  GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

who  should  be  saved  &  who  not  i  began  to  think  i 
was  not  Elected  &  that  god  made  some  for  heaven  & 
me  for  hell  &  i  thought  god  was  not  Just  in  so  doing 
i  thought  i  did  not  stand  on  even  Ground  with  others  if 
as  i  thought  i  was  made  to  be  damned  my  heart  then 
rose  against  god  exceedigly  for  his  making  me  for  hell 
now  this  distress  lasted  almost  two  years." 

Something  similar  to  this  excitement  attending 
Mr.  Whitefield's  preaching  at  Middletown  attended 
his  preaching  everywhere.  And  there  was  to  a  very 
considerable  extent  a  substantial  justification  for  the 
enthusiasm  felt.  A  quickened  state  of  religious  feel- 
ing, which  here  and  there  had  broken  out,  as  we  have 
seen,  into  distinct  religious  awakenings,  had  prepared 
the  way  for  the  most  impassioned  of  his  utterances. 
His  fame  as  an  evangelist  had  preceded  him  and 
had  enkindled  anticipation  of  the  beneficial  results  to 
follow  his  coming.  His  methods  were  novel,  and  his 
endowments  for  his  undertaking  certainly  large. 
The  ministers  of  New  England  at  this  period,  with 
very  few  exceptions,  preached  from  closely  written 
manuscripts,  which  must  generally  have  been  held 
in  the  hand,  and  often  near  to  the  eyes,  and  their 
preaching  was  with  few  graces  of  manner  or  elocu- 
tion. Here  suddenly  appeared  among  them  a  young 
man  of  twenty-six  years  of  age,  whom  nature  had  en- 
dowed with  some  of  the  greatest  gifts  of  an  orator,  — 
a  splendid  physique,  a  marvelous  voice,  a  vivid 
dramatic  power, — one  who  seemed  to  pour  forth 
his  torrent  of  apparently  unpremeditated  eloquence 
without  fatigue  or  study.     It  was  a  novel  experience 


WHITEFIELD'S  PREACHING,  93 

to  listen  to  such  a  man.  American  congregations 
had  never  heard  the  like. 

And,  for  the  most  part,  his  utterances  were  such 
as  were  suited  profitably  to  arouse  and  safely  to 
guide  religious  feeling  in  his  hearers.  He  spoke  to 
men's  spiritual  wants.  He  depicted  at  once  their 
sin  and  the  way  of  deliverance  from  sin.  His  strong 
Calvinistic  presentations  of  the  sovereignty  of  God's 
elective  purposes  were  softened  by  his  fervent,  if 
somewhat  illogical,  appeals  to  human  activity  in 
turning  to  repentance  and  faith. 

There  was,  indeed,  all  along,  and  increasingly  as 
his  progress  through  the  prostrate  crowds  of  admiring 
listeners  drew  toward  its  close  on  this  first  pilgrim- 
age, another  side  to  his  utterances,  and  one  which 
was  destined  to  have  a  serious  bearing  on  his  future 
influence,  as  well  as  a  disastrous  effect  on  the  course 
of  that  religious  awakening  he  did  so  much  to 
arouse. 

While  Mr.  Whitefield  was  eloquent,  devout,  and 
doubtless  "  sincere,"  he  was  also  young,  opinionated, 
and  censorious.  He  was  easily  affected  by  the  phys- 
ical phenomena  which  sometimes  attended  his  im- 
passioned exhortations,  —  the  outcries,  the  ecstasies, 
the  swoonings  away,  —  and  instead  of  repressing 
them  as  unessential,  he  so  treated  them,  recorded 
them,  and  gloried  in  them,  that  they  came  in  the 
common  view  to  be  regarded  as  almost  necessary 
signs  of  a  true  revival,  and  were,  by  several  of  Mr. 
Whitefield's  ardent  followers  and  imitators,  extrava- 
gantly encouraged  and  cultivated.     He  gave  great 


94  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING." 

place  and  importance  to  sudden  impulses,  and,  as  he 
regarded  them,  direct  suggestions  on  the  mind  from 
divine  sources  as  to  actions  to  be  performed,  or  as  to 
estimates  to  be  made  of  men's  character.  Jonathan 
Edwards,  riding  horseback  by  his  side  from  North- 
ampton to  Windsor,  ventured  to  suggest  to  him  that 
he  gave  too  great  heed  to  such  things.  The  sugges- 
tion was  very  coolly  received ;  and  though  there  was 
no  break  between  them  on  account  of  it,  Mr.  Ed- 
wards records :  ^  *'  I  thought  Mr.  Whitefield  liked  me 
not  so  well  for  my  opposing  those  things."  Mr.  White- 
field  lent  also  the  great  weight  of  his  influence  to  a 
harsh  and  censorious  judgment  of  his  fellow-ministers, 
especially  any  who  did  not  at  once  cooperate  with  him 
in  his  characteristic  measures,  declaring  them  blind 
and  unconverted.  So  sweeping  and  denunciatory  were 
his  judgments  —  to  the  extent  even  of  deliberately 
writing  down  in  his  journal  ^  at  the  close  of  his  first 
New  England  tour,  that,  in  his  opinion,  "  many,  nay 
most  that  preach,  do  not  experimentally  know 
Christ "  —  that  an  inevitable  reaction  took  place  in 
the  minds  of  some  who  had  at  first  yielded  their 
judgments  to  his  control.  Then,  too,  good,  pains- 
taking men  were  willing  to  be  guided,  and  even  to 
be  reproved,  by  this  gifted  youth ;  but,  conscious  of 
their  own  integrity  and  the  sincerity  of  their  motives, 
they  did  not  relish,  nor  could  they  be  expected  to 
relish,  a  general  denial,  before  their  congregations, 
of  their  Christian  character  and  their  proper  place 
in  the  Christian  ministry. 

1  Letters  to  Clap.  ^  Seventh  Journal,  p.  56. 


UNFAVORABLE  FEATURES.  96 

Mr.  Whitefield's  unfavorable  estimates  of  New- 
England's  religious  guidances  went  beyond  the 
pulpits,  and  enveloped  in  condemnation  the  two 
colleges.  Of  these  he  said :  ^  "  Their  Light  has  be- 
come Darkness,  Darkness  that  may  be  felt." 

These  harsh  and  divisive  utterances  of  Mr.  White- 
field  were  aggravated  in  their  effect  by  the  conduct 
of  very  many  subsequent  participators  in  the  evan- 
gelistic itineracy  which  shortly  became  a  marked 
feature  of  this  epoch.  Several  of  these  itinerating 
evangelists  were  men  whose  piety  and  sincerity  none 
could  question,  though  there  were  those  even  among 
these  whose  discretion  was  certainly  open  to  doubt ; 
while  in  the  cases  of  Rev.  Gilbert  Tennent  and  Rev. 
James  Davenport  something  more  than  indiscre- 
tion characterized  utterances  whose  direct  influence 
was  to  alienate  congregations  from  their  pastors, 
and  to  stimulate  and  encourage  whatever  was  ex- 
travagant in  the  emotions  of  their  hearers.  But  this 
itineracy  on  the  part  of  the  ministry  —  itself  a  new 
thing  in  New  England,  and,  rightly  or  wrongly,  looked 
upon  with  disfavor  by  the  more  conservatively  inclined 
—  was  supplemented  by  a  lay  itineracy,  entirely 
novel  in  New  England,  and  certainly  not  always  either 
devout  or  wise.  We  are  vividly  reminded  of  a  con- 
dition of  things  in  England  a  century  previous,  in 
the  last  years  of  Charles  I.  and  the  days  of  the  Com- 
monwealth, when  a  like  confusion  of  functions  in 
worship  extensively  prevailed.  A  hostile  and  criti- 
cising, but  substantially  truthful,  memorial  of  the 

J  Seventh  Journal,  p.  57. 


96  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING,'' 

state  of  affairs  at  that  time  remains,  among  a  great 
mass  of  similar  evidence,  in  a  pamphlet  ^  published 
in  1641,  almost  exactly  a  hundred  years  previous  to 
the  days  of  which  we  are  now  speaking.  This  de- 
scription introduces  us  to  the  similarly  illiterate  and 
incoherent  leaderships  in  worship  of  "  Greene  the 
felt-maker,  Martin  the  button-maker,  Spencer  the^ 
coachman,  Rodgers  the  glover,"  and  of  various  oth- 
ers, who  claimed  to  speak  "  only  as  the  Spirit  moves," 
and  who  "  for  this  one  reason  set  themselves  against 
those  scholars,  as  bishops,  deans,  and  deacons,  who 
strive  to  construe  the  Scripture  according  to  the 
translation  of  the  Hebrew,  Greek  and  Latin  ;  which 
last  language  [because  of  its  association  with  popery], 
stinks  like  a  piece  of  bief  a  twelvemonth  old." 

A  lively  contemporaneous  letter  home  to  England 
gives  an  obviously  not  sympathetic,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  probably  not  very  much  exaggerated, 
account  of  things  in  some  places  shortly  after  Mr. 
Whitefield's  first  transit  through  the  colonies  :  ^  — 

"There  is  a  Creature  here  whom  you  perhaps  never 
heard  of  before.  It  is  called  an  Exhorter.  It  is  of  both 
Sexes,  but  generally  of  the  Male,  and  young.  Its  dis- 
tinguishing Qualities,  are /^nora9ice,/mpM(ience,ZeaZ.  .  .  . 
Such  of  them  as  have  good  Voices  do  great  Execution  ; 
they  move  their  Hearers,  make  them  cry,  faint,  swoon, 
fall  into  Convulsions.  .  .   .  The  Ministers  have  generally 

1  The  Brownists  Synagogue,  or  A  Late  Discovery  of  their  Conven- 
ticles, etc. 

2  State  of  Religion  in  New  England  since  the  Reverend  Mr.  George 
Whitefield's  Arrival  there  [Glasgow,  1742],  pp.  6,  7. 


EXTRA  VA  GA  NCES.  97 

endeavoured  to  preserve  some  kind  of  Order,  and  been 
satisfied  with  the  crying  out  of  a  Number  at  the  hearing 
of  their  Sermons  ;  (the  Minister  that  never  made  Some- 
body or  other  cry,  is  unconverted)  but  the  Exhorters 
tarry  in  the  Meeting-house  with  the  People  after  the 
Minister  is  gone,  and  sometimes  several  of  them  exhort 
at  once  in  different  Parts  of  the  House,  and  then  there 
is  terrible  Doings.  You  may  hear  screaming,  singing, 
laughing,  praying,  all  at  once  ;  and,  in  other  Parts,  they 
fall  into  Visions,  Trances,  Convulsions.  When  they  come 
out  of  their  Trances,  they  commonly  tell  a  senseless 
Story  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  and  whom  and  what  they  saw 
there." 

This  is  not  sympathetic,  as  was  said,  but  neither 
can  it  be  deemed  untruthful.  The  evidence  is  au- 
thentic and  multifarious  that  there  prevailed  very 
widely  extravagances  and  disorders  in  the  conduct 
of  so-called  religious  meetings,  of  which  the  fol- 
lowing from  an  eye-witness  may  be  taken  as  an 
example :  ^  — 

"The  Meeting  was  carried  on  with  what  appeared  to 
me  great  Confusion ;  some  screaming  out  in  Distress 
and  Anguish;  some  praying;  others  singing ;  some 
2ig2i\xi  jumping  up  and  dovm  the  House,  while  others  were 
exhorting ;  some  lying  along  on  the  Floor,  and  others 
ivalJiing  and  talking :  The  whole  with  a  very  great  Noise, 
to  be  heard  at  a  Mile's  Distance,  and  continued  almost 
the  whole  Night.  .  .  .  Many  of  tlie  young  Women  would 
go  about  the  House  jnaying  and  exhorting;  then  they 
would  separate  themselves  from  the  other  People,  and 

1  Chauncy'3  Seasonable  Thoughts,  pp.  239,  40. 
7 


98  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

get  into  a  Corner  of  the  House  to  sing  and  rejoice  to- 
gether ;  And  then  they  would  break  forth  into  as  great  a 
Laughter  as  could  be,  to  think,  as  they  exprest  it,  that 
they  should  go  Hand  in  Hand  to  Heaven.  .  .  .  And  all 
this,  when,  at  the  same  Time,  there  were  threescore  Per- 
sons lying,  some  on  the  Floor,  some  across  the  Seats, 
while  otliers  were  held  up  and  supported  in  great 
Distress." 

When  so  grave  and  distinguished  a  minister  as 
Rev.  Solomon  Williams  of  Lebanon,  Connecticut,  felt 
compelled  to  preach  and  publish  a  sermon, ^  occa- 
sioned by  the  visions  seen  in  a  trance  by  two  chil- 
dren, a  boy  of  thirteen  and  a  girl  of  eleven,  wherein 
they  alleged  that  they  had  been  shown  the  Book  of 
Life,  and  the  names  of  some  of  their  friends  and 
neighbors  written  in  it,  but  that  the  Book  lacked 
only  one  page  of  being  full,  by  which  tidings  the 
whole  town  of  Lebanon  was  disquieted,  —  it  is  plain 
that  attention  was  being  turned  and  importance 
attached  to  accidental  and  even  injurious  circum- 
stances attendant  upon  the  awakening,  and  caused 
oftentimes  by  violent  and  ignorant  leadership  in  it, 
to  the  serious  detriment  of  its  lasting  good  effects 
on  the  spiritual  life. 

The  drawbacks  on  the  benign  character  of  the 
spiritual  movement,  occasioned  by  the  extravagance 
of  exhorters,  the  stress  put  upon  visions,  trances,  im- 
pulses, and  revelations,  were  indeed  great.  We  need 
not  go  to  the  pages  of  Chauncy  alone,  who,  for  his 
"  Seasonable  Thoughts  on  the  State  of  Religion  in 

1  The  More  Excellent  Way,  Prefatory  Letter  [1742]. 


EXTRA  VA  GA NCES.  99 

New  England,"  was  most  unjustly  stigmatized  as  an 
enemy  of  God  and  religion,  for  evidence  on  this  point. 
Jonathan  Edwards,  the  great  supporter  and  histo- 
rian of  the  movement,  gives  more  than  one  third  of 
his  whole  volume  ^  on  the  Revival,  to  pointing  out 
things  in  it  which  were  to  be  "  corrected  and  avoided." 
The  witness  of  the  ministerial  associations  of  the 
period  is  very  generally  similar.  Many  of  them  felt 
compelled  to  put  on  record  conclusions  like  those 
adopted  by  the  Hartford  North  Association,  August 
11,  1741,  of  which  it  is  sufficient  to  quote  here  from 
the  manuscript  record  two  only  :  — 

"  Whether  any  Weight  is  to  be  Laid  upon  those  screach- 
ings,  cryings  out,  faintings  and  convulsions  which  some- 
times attend  y^  terrifying  Language  of  some  preachers 
and  others,  as  Evidences  of,  or  necessary  to,  a  genuine 
Conviction  of  Sin,  humiUation,  and  preparation  for 
Christ  ?  Agreed  in  the  Negative^  as  also  that  there  is  no 
Weight  to  be  Laid  upon  those  Visions  or  visional  Discov- 
eries by  some  of  Late  pretended  to,  of  Heaven  or  Hell, 
or  y«  body  or  blood  of  Christ,  i-iz  as  represented  to 
y®  eyes  of  y«  body. 

"Whether  y«  assertion  of  some  Itinerant  preachers  that 
ye  pure  Gospel  and  especially  y^  doctrines  of  Regenera- 
tion and  Justification  by  faith  are  not  preached  in  these 
Churches  :  their  Rash  censuring  y^  body  of  our  clergy  as 
Carnal  and  unconverted  men,  and  notoriously  unfit  for 
their  office  is  not  such  a  sinful!  and  Scandalous  violation 
of  the  fifth  and  ninth  Commandments  of  y®  Moral  Law 

1  Some  Thoughts  Concerning  the  Present  Revival  of  Religion  in  New 
England  [1742],  pp.  188-326. 


100  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

as  ought  to  be   testified  against?  .  .  .  Agreed  in  y® 
affirmative." 

On  the  whole,  it  is  not  surprising  that,  before  the 
second  tour  of  Mr.  Whitefield  through  New  England, 
in  1744,  extensive  divisions  of  sentiment  respecting 
the  revivalistic  movement,  so  largely  represented  bj 
him,  should  have  developed,  and  should  practically 
have  separated  the  ministry,  as  also  the  churches, 
into  two  parties.  Formal  legislation  had  been  en- 
acted in  Connecticut^  to  suppress  itineracy  in  that 
commonwealth,  and  several  ministers  and  laymen 
had  been  imprisoned  for  preaching  without  leave  in 
the  parishes  of  settled  ministers.  The  faculties  of 
Harvard  and  Yale  published  "  Testimonies  "  against 
"  Mr.  Whitefield  and  his  conduct ; "  protests  against 
his  admission  to  the  pulpits  of  the  churches  were 
adopted  by  several  district  ministerial  associations 
in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  and  by  the  Gen- 
eral Association  of  the  latter  colony.  So  that,  though 
several  of  the  Boston  ministers  still  opened  their 
pulpits  to  him,  and  it  was  even  proposed  to  build 
there  the  largest  church  edifice  in  America  for  his 
permanent  occupancy,  Whitefield's  second  coming 
was  attended  by  comparatively  trifling  results.  Of 
his  subsequent  visitations  to  New  England  in  1754, 
1764,  and  1770,  there  is  here  no  especial  occasion  to 
speak. 

The  great  wave  of  emotion  which  rolled  across 
the  country  in  the  Great  Awakening  years  of  1740, 

1  Colonial  Records,  vol.  viii.  456,  457. 


RESULTS   OF  THE  REVIVAL,  101 

1741,  and  1742,  subsided  almost  as  rapidly  as  it 
arose.  Additions  to  the  churches  rapidly  declined. 
The  year  1741  saw  sixty -nine  admissions  to  the  Old 
South  Church  in  Boston,  and  twenty-four  in  1742  ; 
1746  saw  the  number  reduced  to  two;  1747  to  six, 
and  1748  to  three.  At  Northampton,  where  the 
interest  attending  the  revival  in  1740  was  very  in- 
tense, and  where,  as  Mr.  Edwards  records,^  "  It  was 
a  very  frequent  Thing  to  see  an  House-full  of  Out- 
cries, Fainting s,  Convulsions,  and  such  like,  both  with 
Distress  and  also  with  Admiration  and  «/by,"  and 
where  great  numbers  w^ere  added  to  the  church,  the 
interest  so  declined  that,  from  1744  to  1748,  not  a 
new  candidate  was  propounded. 

In  Hartford,  where  more  conservative  methods 
prevailed,  and  where  most  of  the  ministers  were 
under  a  bitter  and  false  reproach  as  enemies  to  the 
Revival,  something  of  the  same  difference  was  also 
manifested.  Twenty-seven  persons  came  into  full 
communion  in  the  First  Church  in  1741,  against  five 
in  1742,  four  in  1743,  and  one  in  1744. 

But,  though,  in  some  of  its  manifestations, the  Great 
Awakening  seemed  ephemeral,  there  were  character- 
istics of  it  and  consequences  flowing  from  it  which 
profoundly  affected  the  religious  life,  not  only  of  the 
immediate  period,  but  of  much  after-time. 

Not  only  did  it  at  once  reinforce  the  membership 
of  the  New  England  churches  by  a  large  numerical 
accession,  —  the  estimates  are  as  wide  apart  as  the 
reasonable  one  of  ten  or  twelve  thousand,  and  the 

1  Christian  Ilistorij,  January  14,  1743. 


102  THE   ''GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

absurd  one  of  fifty  thousand, —  but  the  members  so 
introduced  came  into  the  churches  under  the  impulse 
of  an  intensity  of  feeling,  and,  in  many  cases,  under 
the  pressure  of  dogmatic  convictions,  to  which  the 
two  or  three  generations  of  their  predecessors  had 
been  comparative  strangers.  A  great,  and  in  some 
respects  a  lasting,  effect  had  been  wrought  by  those 
two  or  three  years  of  unusual  spiritual  awakening, 
and  by  the  activities  accompanying  them,  upon  the 
type  of  prevalent  religious  life. 

One  indication  —  which  in  its  turn  became  also  a 
cause  —  of  this  altered  type  of  religious  feeling  is  to 
be  found  in  the  changed  character  of. preaching. 

The  accusations  were,  indeed,  unjust  which  White- 
field  and  James  Davenport  in  that  heated  time  made 
against  the  New  England  ministry,  that  they  were 
mostly  unconverted  men  and  preachers  of  a  lifeless 
Gospel.  Gilbert  Tennent's  characterization  of  them^ 
as  "  blind  and  dead  men,"  "  drones,"  "  dupes,"  "  men 
whom  the  devil  drives  into  the  ministry,"  may  be  left 
to  the  contempt  its  extravagant  censoriousness  de- 
serves. But  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  Awaken- 
ing produced  a  mighty  change  in  the  pulpit  spirit 
throughout  New  England.  It  was  not  for  nothing, 
however  many  of  the  ministers  dissented  from  the 
methods  of  Mr.  Whitefield,  that  that  fiery  evangelist 
had  swept  across  their  orbit  of  vision,  and  that  his 
preaching  had  been  so  potent  in  stirring  the  hearts 
of  men.     Even  the  response  of  the  multitude  to  the 

1  In  his  Sermon  dedicated  to  the  people  of  Nottingham,  Penn- 
sylvania. 


PREACHING  STIMULATED.  103 

harangues  of  ignorant  exhorters  had  its  lessons  for 
such  of  the  ministers  as  were  wise.  And  among  the 
preachers  of  the  Awakening  hour,  and  of  following 
years,  there  were  some  of  eminent  gifts,  whose  piety 
could  not  be  questioned,  whose  methods  could  not 
be  substantially  condemned,  and  whose  influence 
was  propagative  and  contagious.  Edwards,  Parsons, 
Mills,  Wheelock,  Pomeroy,  and,  as  a  man  of  pulpit 
power  greater  than  any  of  them,  Joseph  Bellamy, 
were  all  enthusiastically  engaged  in  the  revival 
movement  in  its  most  active  stage,  and  abated  none 
of  their  earnestness  afterward.  The  effect  of  the 
awakening,  and  of  the  examples  of  its  chief  promot- 
ers, could  not  but  be  felt  in  tlie  pulpits  generally. 
Even  in  communities  like  some  in  Connecticut,  wiiere 
the  ministers  were  thought  inimical  to  the  revival, 
there  is  ample  recorded  evidence  of  greatly  increased 
ministerial  activity  ;  of  heightened  fervency  of  appeal 
from  the  pulpit ;  of  multiplied  occasions  of  public 
and  social  worship,  and  enhanced  pastoral  vigilance. 
The  pulpits  of  the  country  were  revived,  and  more 
lastingly  than  the  pews. 

As  a  natural  accompaniment  of  this  more  strenu- 
ous presentation  of  religious  truth,  religious  experi- 
ence took  on,  all  through  the  immediate  years  wdiich 
we  call  those  of  the  Awakening,  and  sporadically 
and  occasionally  long  afterward,  an  intensity  of  char- 
acter, especially  in  its  outward  manifestation,  that 
had  been  unprecedented  in  previous  New  England 
history.  The  extensive  prevalence  of  physical  phe- 
nomena, of  swoonings,  trances,  outcries,  and  convul- 


104  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

sions,  has  already  been  pointed  out.  Even  so  great 
and  clear-sighted  a  man  as  Jonathan  Edwards  pro- 
nounced these  manifestations,^  if  "  not  certain,"  yet 
"  probable  tokens  of  God's  presence,  and  arguments 
of  the  success  of  preaching."  He  felt  called  on  to 
"  rejoice  in  them,  and  to  bless  God  for  them."  And 
it  is  worth  while  to  note  that  their  place  and  value 
in  religious  experience  became  the  subject  of  large 
discussion ;  careful  arguments  in  their  behalf,  like 
those  of  Mr.  Edwards's,  being  made  by  many.  These 
arguments  found,  naturally,  welcome  response  in  the 
minds  of  people  sympathetically  inclined  toward  the 
revival  itself.  On  the  other  hand,  a  considerable 
body  of  antagonistic  literature  remains  to  us,  em- 
bracing resolutions  passed  by  ministerial  associa- 
tions, sermons  deprecating  such  manifestations  and 
impeaching  their  utility,  and  even  republished  pam- 
phlets from  abroad  setting  forth  the  alleged  mislead- 
ing and  dangerous  character  of  such  phenomena, 
as  illustrated  in  other  lands,  —  all  witnessing  to 
the  interest  felt  in  a  phase  of  religious  experience 
at  once  so  prevalent,  so  intense,  and  so  obscure. 

Mr.  Edwards  himself  might  easily  be  excused  — 
if  any  excuse  be  thought  necessary  —  for  the  leni- 
ency of  his  opinion  about  these  physical  phenomena, 
in  view  of  their  wonderful  manifestation  in  his  own 
house  at  various  earlier  times,  and  especially  in  1742, 
in  the  person  of  his  beautiful  and  saintly  wife,  Sarah 
Pierpont,  whose  "  faintings,"  "loss  of  strength," 
"  sinkings  down  to  the  floor,"    repeated  for   many 

1  Thoughts  on  the  Revival,  p.  192. 


PHYSICAL  PHENOMENA.  105 

successive  days,  she  distinctly  ascribes  —  and  be  as 
devoutly  records  as  only  to  be  ascribed  —  to  dis- 
closures of  heavenly  things,  and  influxes  of  spiritual 
influence  too  great  for  mortal  flesh  to  endure.^ 

But,  account  for  these  things  as  we  may,  they 
were  a  feature  of  the  spiritual  phenomena  of  tlie 
period,  more  marked  and  pervasive  than  they  have 
been  at  any  other  time  in  New  England  history : 
albeit  they  have,  to  some  extent  and  in  lessened  de- 
gree, appeared  and  re-appeared  in  many  subsequent 
seasons  of  religious  interest  down  to  our  own  day. 

Closely  connected  with  what  has  just  been  spoken 
of,  and  probably  in  part  at  least  psychologically  ex- 
planatory of  it,  was  that  feature  of  the  religious  life 
of  the  revival  epoch  which  consisted  in  a  greatly 
vivified  sense  of  the  pressure  on  men's  minds  of  cer- 
tain dogmatic  views  of  religious  truth;  especially 
those  of  the  Divine  sovereignty  and  holiness,  and  of 
human  dependence  and  sinfulness. 

In  both  of  these  respects  there  was,  in  point  of 
fact,  a  distinct  reversion  of  experience  to  an  earlier 
type ;  to  that  of  a  century  and  more  previous.  We 
are  very  strongly  reminded  by  the  narratives  of  spir- 
itual struggle  which  have  been  preserved  to  us  from 
this  Great  Awakening  era,  under  the  preachings  of 
Whitefield,  Edwards,  and  Tennent,  of  those  earlier 
struggles  which  were  connected  with  the  utterances 
of  Perkins  and  Rogers  in  Old  England,  and  their 
disciples.  Hooker  and  Shepherd,  in  New  England. 

1  See  Dwight's  Life  of  Edivards,  chapter  xiv,,  and  Edwards's 
Thoughts  on  the  Reviral,  pp.  62-78. 


106  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

Indeed,  there  was  such  a  correspondency  of  moral 
and  spiritual  conditions  between  the  two  epochs, 
across  the  breadth  of  the  century  between,  that 
many  books  published  in  the  former  era  were  now 
republished  as  suited  to  present  needs,  —  for  ex- 
ample. Hooker's  "  Poor  Doubting  Christian  Drawne 
unto  Christ,"  first  printed  in  London  in  1629,  and  now 
reprinted  at  Boston  in  1743  ;  or  Shepherd's  "  Sincere 
Convert "  and  "  Sound  Beleever,"  first  published  in 
1645  and  1646,  and  again  reprinted,  both  of  them, 
in  1742. 

There  was  a  certain  perceivable  difference,  never- 
theless, which  cannot  fail  to  strike  the  careful 
reader,  in  the  methods  of  setting  forth  the  same 
tremendous  facts  —  say  of  sovereignty  and  depend- 
ence, of  holiness  and  sinfulness  —  in  the  two  periods, 
which  must,  to  some  extent,  have  modified  the  ex- 
periences to  which  the  strong  assertion  of  these  facts 
gave  rise.  That  is  to  say,  there  was  in  the  earlier 
period  much  more  of  contentment  with  the  vivid 
announcement  and  illustration  of  any  alleged  truth 
under  consideration,  and  much  less  of  an  attempt  to 
explain  the  truth  and  set  it  in  its  proper  intellectual 
place  as  a  thing  to  be  rationally  justified,  than  in  the 
latter. 

Take,  for  an  example  of  what  is  thus  perceivable, 
the  treatment  of  the  question  of  sinfulness,  as  this 
awful  fact  of  human  experience  is  handled  by  Thomas 
Hooker  in  1632,  and  by  Jonathan  Edwards  about 
1740.     Mr.  Hooker  says  :  ^  — 

1  Soules  Preparation  [1635],  pp.  20-26. 


DOCTRINAL   EXPOSITION.  107 

"It  is  not  every  sight  of  sinne  will  serve  the  turne, 
nor  every  apprehension  of  a  mans  vilenesse.  .  .  .  Wee 
must  looke  on  the  nature  of  sinne  in  the  venome  of  it, 
the  deadly  hurtful!  nature  that  it  hath,  for  plagues  and 
miseries,  it  doth  procure  to  our  soules,  and  that  you  may 
doe  ...  if  you  compare  it  with  other  things  .  .  .  that 
are  most  fearefull  and  horrible ;  As  suppose  any  soule 
here  present  were  to  behold  the  damned  in  hell,  and  if 
the  Lord  should  give  thee  a  little  peepe-hole  into  hell, 
that  thou  didst  see  the  horror  of  those  damned  soules  .  .  . 
then  propound  this  to  thy  owne  heart,  what  paines  the 
damned  in  hell  doe  endure  for  sinne,  .  .  .  the  least  sinne 
that  ever  thou  didst  commit,  though  thou  makest  a  light 
matter  of  it,  is  a  greater  evill  then  the  paines  of  the 
damned  in  hell,  setting  aside  their  sinne  ;  all  the  tor- 
ments in  hell  are  not  so  great  an  evill  as  the  least 
sin  is." 

There  you  have  a  brief  specimen  of  Mr.  Hooker's 
method,  —  statement,  illustration,  intense  even  dra- 
matic setting  forth  of  the  alleged  fact ;  no  attempt 
at  all  at  showing  why  sin  is  sinful. 

Mr.  Edwards's  language  respecting  sin  is  certainly 
not  less  expressive  of  the  profoundest  sense  of  its 
reality  and  dreadfulness  :  — 

"  My  wickedness,  as  I  am  in  myself,"  he  says,^  "  has 
long  appeared  to  me  perfectly  ineffable,  swallowing  up 
all  thought  and  imagination  ...  I  know  not  how  better 
to  express  what  my  sins  appear  to  me  to  be,  than  by 
heaping  infinite  upon  infinite,  and  multiplying  infinite  by 

1  Personal  Narrative,  D wight's  Life,  p.  134. 


108  THE  "  GREA  T  A  WAKENING:' 

infinite  .  .  .  When  I  look  into  my  heart,  and  take  a 
view  of  my  wickedness,  it  looks  like  an  abyss  infinitely 
deeper  than  hell." 

But  Edwards  was  not  content  to  have  his  hearers 
rest  in  mere  belief  and  feeling  of  what  he  regarded 
as  a  fact.  He  must  try  to  have  them  justify  the  fact 
to  their  own  minds,  and  set  it  in  its  proper  place  in 
a  more  or  less  complete  intellectual  system.  And 
therefore  he,  and  many  with  and  after  him,  under- 
took to  explain  the  infinite  evil  and  indesert  of  sin 
by  "  its  being  committed  against  an  infinite  object."  ^ 
As  God  is  an  infinite  being,  sin  against  God  must  be 
an  infinite  sin.  We  most  of  us,  probably,  may  think 
the  elaborate  argument,  by  which  the  great  and  acute 
intellect  of  Edwards  attempted  thus  to  prove  to  his 
hearers  the  evil  of  sin,  is  really  only  a  trick  of  the 
imagination  and  a  bit  of  word-play;  but  it  shows 
the  difference  spoken  of  between  the  popular  treat- 
ment of  the  same  fact  in  1740  and  a  century 
earlier. 

A  similar  token  of  the  difference  referred  to  is  to 
be  seen  in  the  unlike  manner  in  w^hich  another  point 
of  spiritual  experience  was  treated  in  the  two  eras. 
It  has  been  seen  2  that  Shepherd  and  Hooker  both 
taught,  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  doctrine  of  an  unconditional  submission  to  the 
divine  will,  so  extreme  as  to  involve  a  willingness  to 
be  lost.  Hooker  calls  such  a  contentment  in  dam- 
nation a  "  blessed  frame  of  heart."    "  0  this  heart  is 

1  Works  [1809],  vii.  27,  28. 

2  Ante,  p.  28. 


WILLINGNESS   TO  BE  LOST.  109 

worth  Gold,"  he  says.^  But  he  does  not  undertake 
—  beyond  a  mere  reference  to  the  indesert  of  the 
soul  for  anything  better  —  to  explain  why  such  ex- 
tremity of  submission  is  obligatory  or  commendable. 

But  when,  in  1740  and  in  subsequent  years,  there 
was  a  recrudescence  of  this  extreme  and  —  to  most 
minds  —  harassing  test  of  spiritual  experience,  the 
matter  was  stated  in  a  very  different  way.  When 
the  fervid  Sarah  Edwards  contemplated  the  possibil- 
ity that  it  would  be  "  most  for  the  honour  of  God  " 
that  she  should  "  die  in  horror  "  and  live  forever  in 
torment,  the  ground  of  her  "sweet  quietness  and 
alacrity  of  soul  in  consenting  that  it  should  be  so," 
to  the  "banishing  of  all  reluctance"  even,  was  pre- 
cisely that  God  would,  in  that  case,  be  most  glorified  ; 
and  that  God's  glory  was  the  creature's  supreme 
duty.2  When  the  cool  and  clear-headed  Samuel 
Hopkins,  a  little  later,  took  up  and  inculcated  the 
same  doctrine  of  an  unconditional  submission  to  the 
will  of  God,  reaching  even  to  a  willingness  to  be 
eternally  lost  if  it  was  for  the  highest  glory  of  God 
and  the  good  of  the  universe,  he  found  the  reason 
for  its  binding  obligation  in  the  duty  of  disinterested 
benevolence  and  willing  acceptance  of  whatever  would 
make  for  the  largest  welfare.^ 

All  which  suggests,  what  was  indeed  the  fact,  that 
New  England  thought,  long  comparatively  indifferent 
to  theology  as  a  systematic  subject  of  inquiry,  was, 

1  Humiliation,  pp.  106,  107. 

2  Dwight's  Life,  p.  182;   Thoughts,  p.  71. 
8  Works  [1811],  i.   465-491. 


110  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

under  the  strong  impulse  of  the  Revival,  awakening 
to  a  new  interest  in  doctrinal  matters.  Questions 
were  started  in  the  hot  hours  of  spiritual  struggle 
which  needed  to  be  thought  out  in  more  leisurely 
days ;  questions  of  the  extent  and  nature  of  man's 
ability  under  such  appeals  of  the  Gospel  as  had 
characterized  that  evangelistic  time ;  questions  of 
the  relation  of  the  divine  promises  to  men  in  the 
condition  in  which  the  Awakening  found  or  left 
them;  questions  of  the  nature  of  that  process 
through  which  so  many  of  the  hopeful  subjects  of 
the  Revival  had  passed ;  or  of  those  moral  attitudes 
and  qualities  that  God  requires  of  men  always. 

Such  questions  as  these,  together  with  the  agitated 
but  still  unsettled  problem  of  a  proper  theory  of 
church  relationship  —  of  baptism  and  covenant,  and 
sacramental  privilege  —  were  pressing  with  a  new 
interest  on  the  quickened  mind  of  the  period. 

Thought  was  turning  into  the  channel  of  system- 
atic doctrine.  A  characteristic  New  England  The- 
ology was  in  the  process  of  generation.  And  perhaps 
—  aside,  of  course,  from  the  momentous  question  of 
the  bearing  of  revival  experiences  on  the  history  of 
individual  souls  —  the  most  important  result  of  the 
Great  Awakening  was  in  the  dogmatic  discussions 
aroused  by  it,  which  ultimately  worked  themselves 
out,  through  the  teachings  of  the  two  Edwardses, 
Bellamy,  Hopkins,  Emmons,  and  Dwight,  into  the 
general  type  of  religious  belief  which  is  known  as 
"  New  England  Theology."  This  substantially  har- 
monious though  progressive  movement  was  paral- 


INTEREST  IN  DOCTRINE.  Ill 

leled,  however,  on  two  sides,  —  on  the  one  side,  in 
the  interest  of  an  older  orthodoxy,  by  the  teach- 
ings of  a  conservative  school,  of  diminishing  num- 
bers and  declining  influence,  of  which  such  men  as 
Samuel  Phillips,  Thomas  Clap,  William  Hart,  and 
Moses  Hemmenway  may  be  taken  as  representatives  ; 
and  on  the  other,  by  a  liberalizing  school,  repre- 
sented by  Experience  and  Jonathan  Mayhew,  Charles 
Chauncy,  Lemuel  Briant,  Samuel  Webster,  and  Clark 
Brown,  which  ultimately  developed  into  the  Unita- 
rianism  of  Channing  and  Ware,  and  the  schism  of 
the  first  part  of  the  present  century.  But,  as  there 
has  been  occasion  more  than  once  previously  to 
remark,  doctrinal  discussions,  as  such,  do  not  come 
within  the  scope  of  our  present  design,  and  they  are 
referred  to  now  only  as  one  of  the  factors  influencing 
the  religious  life  of  the  period. 

In  this  aspect  of  them,  these  discussions  undoubt- 
edly tended  very  considerably  to  distract  attention 
from  individual  spiritual  concerns,  and  were  among 
the  causes  of  the  subsidence  of  that  form  and  degree 
of  religious  enthusiasm  which  had  been  so  hailed  by 
Edwards  and  his  associates  as  the  harbinger,  almost, 
of  a  millennial  day.  And  when  to  these  polemic 
controversies  was  added  the  rigorous  exercise  of 
ecclesiastical  measures,  especially  in  Connecticut, 
for  the  repression  of  the  more  characteristic  features 
of  the  Revival,  —  itineracy,  lay-exhortation,  and  crit- 
icism of  religious  authority  generally ;  and  to  these, 
again,  the  political  agitation  of  a  succession  of  French 
and  Spanish  wars  which  brought  the  conflicts  of  the 


112  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENINGS 

Old  World  to  every  New  England  door,  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  vision  of  the  "Heaven  upon 
Earth  "  which  Edwards  ^  seemed  to  behold  as  hope- 
fully close  at  hand  should  have  been  dissipated  as 
the  rainbow  is  brushed  by  the  gathering  darkness 
from  the  sunset  skies. 

So  rapid,  indeed,  was  this  change  of  happy  pros- 
pect that,  in  1758,  only  seventeen  years  after  the 
Revival  was  in  full  progress,  Rev.  Benjamin  Throop, 
in  the  Election  Sermon  preached  before  the  Connec- 
ticut governor  and  legislature,  felt  compelled  to  say, 
in  language  strikingly  indicative,  not  only  of  the 
spiritual  declension,  but  of  the  doctrinal  confusion 
of  the  time  :  — 

''  There  is  an  awful  Decay  of  Religion,  and  an  unrea- 
sonable Spirit  of  Jealousy  prevailing :  the  fear  of  God 
is  amazingly  cast  off  in  this  day.  While  some  are  dis- 
puting the  Personality  of  the  Godhead,  and  denying  the 
Lord  that  bought  them  ;  others  are  ridiculing  the  impor- 
tant Doctrine  of  Atonement,  and  casting  contempt  upon 
the  efficacious  Merits  of  a  Glorious  Redeemer ;  many  are 
exploding  the  Doctrine  of  a  free  and  Sovereign  Grace, 
and  exalting  humane  Nature  under  all  its  Depravity  to 
a  situation  equal  to  all  its  Necessities ;  thereby  pervert- 
ing the  Designs  of  the  Gospel,  and  frustrating,  as  far 
as  may  be,  the  Means  of  our  Salvation." 

There  was,  however,  in  certain  quarters,  a  kind  of 
one-sided  prolongation  of  the  Revival  impulse  to 
which  entire  justice  has  not  been  done  by  most  nar- 

1  Thoughts,  p.  149. 


THE  SEPARATISTS.  113 

rators  of  our  New  England  religious  story.  This  was 
to  be  found  among  that  scattered  and  imperfectly 
coordinated  body  of  Christian  people  known  as 
"  Separatists."  The  story  of  Separatism  in  the 
period  now  under  review  is  an  obscure  one.  It  is 
so  partly  because  of  the  ephemeral  character  of  the 
movement  itself,  and  the  perishing  to  a  great  extent 
of  the  documents  whose  preservation  might  have 
illustrated  it;  and  partly  because  of  the  humble 
and  illiterate  quality  of  those  mainly  engaged  in  it. 

They  were  men  and  women  chiefly  ignorant,  enthu- 
siastic, sensitive  to  the  more  emotional  and  acciden- 
tal features  of  the  Revival,  and  without  intellectual 
or  educational  ballast  to  prevent  their  falling  into 
easy  confusion  and  error.  But  there  is  something  to 
be  said  for  them,  nevertheless.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered as  one  explanation  of  the  whole  Separatist 
endeavor,  that  almost  all  the  regular  churches  of  the 
period  were  under  the  operation  of  the  Half-way 
Covenant,  which  brought  into  membership  —  at  least 
into  partial  membership  —  admittedly  unconverted 
persons.  In  Connecticut,  furthermore,  the  churches 
were  under  the  control  of  a  legal  system  which 
established  a  State  Religion  as  truly  as  in  England  or 
in  Spain.  Both  these  facts  were  obnoxious  to  the 
Separatists.  They  believed,  as  did  the  first  fathers 
of  New  England,  that  a  church  should  consist  of 
regenerate  persons  only ;  and  that  Christ  alone,  and 
not  any  civil  power,  was  the  head  and  fountain  of 
all  authority  in  the  Church.  In  both  these  convic- 
tions we  certainly  must  sympathize  with  them,  as 

8 


114  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'* 

against  the  churches  and  the  civil  powers  arrayed 
in  opposition  to  them. 

But  the  Separatists  also  held  the  belief  that  the 
discernment  of  regenerate  persons  —  of  whom  only  a 
church  ought  to  be  composed  — was  a  power  given, 
not  alone  to  apostles  and  prophets  of  the  primitive 
age,  but  intrusted  to  the  church  in  perpetuity  for  its 
habitual  guidance  and  defense.  They  believed  that, 
by  the  employment  of  the  "Key  of  Knowledge" 
granted  them  by  Christ,  a  Christian  could  be  as  well 
distinguished  from  a  non-Christian  "  as  a  sheep 
from  a  dog."  The  test  of  fellowship  was  the  "  in- 
ward actings  of  their  own  souls,"  moving  toward  or 
recoiling  from  sympathy  with  those  brought  into 
association  with  them. 

Joined  with  this  persuasion  of  direct  illumination 
in  discerning  the  spirits  of  men,  was  the  further  be- 
lief that  the  Holy  Spirit's  guidance  was  sufficient  for 
all  religious,  instruction,  superseding  the  necessity  of 
''book-learning"  or  even  of  careful  preparation  in 
"preaching  the  word."  This  was  doubtless  an 
honest  conviction,  but  it  was  certainly  a  very  conven- 
ient one,  for  they  had  almost  no  persons  of  superior 
cultivation  among  them.  Naturally  they  fell  under 
the  guidance  of  well-nigh  illiterate  instructors,  taken 
from  their  own  lay  membership,  and  ordained  as 
their  ministers.  Persuaded  —  and  often  rightly  per- 
suaded—of the  sadly  secularized  character  of  the 
churches  with  which  they  had  been  connected,  they 
separated  from  them  and  established  churches  of 
their  own. 


THE   SEPARATISTS.  115 

Their  numbers  were  never  very  large,  though 
more  than  thirty  organizations  in  more  or  less  com- 
plete church-estate  existed  in  Connecticut  alone ; 
the  best  known  of  which  were  at  Canterbury,  New 
London,  Norwich,  Preston,  Plainfield,  Lyme,  Middle- 
town,  Windsor,  and  Suffield.  They  were  impei-fectly 
associated  in  what  they  called  "  The  Convention  of 
the  Confederated  Strict  Congregational  Churches." 
They  maintained  ecclesiastical  intercourse  with  sim- 
ilar churches  by  way  of  council  in  Massachusetts  and 
Rhode  Island,  and,  to  some  extent,  in  New  York, 
New  Hampshire,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania. 

The  number  of  such  churches  in  Massachusetts  is 
uncertain,  but  the  best  known  among  them  were  those 
of  Attleboro',  Rehoboth,  Middleboro',  Bridgewater, 
Grafton,  Sunderland,  Norton,  Wrentham,  Charles- 
town,  and  Sturbridge. 

Everywhere,  as  come-outers  from  the  '•'  standing- 
order,"  and  as  being  on  the  whole  a  humble  sort  of 
folk,  the  tribulations  of  these  Separating  brethren 
were  severe.  In  Connecticut  their  disabilities  and 
trials  were  really  arduous.  Calling  themselves  Con- 
gregationalists,  and,  indeed,  standing  on  the  original 
Cambridge  Platform  of  Congregationalism,  they 
could  not  secure,  as  Baptist  or  Episcopal  dissenters 
could,  exemption  from  taxation  for  the  support  of 
the  churches  from  whicli  they  seceded,  and  were 
often  subjected  to  distraint  of  their  property,  and 
sometimes  to  imprisonment  of  their  persons,  for 
delinquency  in  paying  legal  dues  to  churches  they 
had  renounced  ;  or  for  preaching  or  exhorting  within 


116  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

the  bounds  of  parishes  belonging  by  ecclesiastical 
and  civil  arrangement  to  other  men.  Rev.  Elisha 
Paine,  once  a  lawyer  of  considerable  repute  in  Con- 
necticut, but  afterward  perhaps  the  leading  minis- 
ter in  the  Separatist  connection,  who  died  in  good 
old  age  and  honor  as  pastor  of  a  church  on  Long 
Island,  was  imprisoned  once  in  Worcester,  Massa- 
chusetts, and  several  times  in  Connecticut,  for 
preaching  in  other  minister's  bounds,  and  his  prop- 
erty was  again  and  again  attached,  and  portions  of 
it  confiscated,  for  non-payment  of  taxes  to  the 
"regular  ministry. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  original  impelling 
impulse  of  the  Separatist  movement  was,  in  the 
main,  a  devout  and  sincere  one.  It  was  an  endeavor 
after  a  more  fervid  type  of  piety,  and  more  activity  in 
the  church-membership,  than  the  Separatist  brethren 
thought  possible  in  the  mixed  fellowship  of  a  "  stand- 
ing-order "  presided  over  by  a  State-authorized 
ministry.  One  is  tempted  to  drop  a  tear  over  the 
failure  of  anticipations  which  had  in  them  so  much 
of  good  intent.  For  of  course  they  could  but  fail. 
The  good  in  them  was  over-weighted  with  too  much 
of  what  was  not  good  to  make  success  possible. 

Their  doctrine  of  the  non-necessity  of  education 
and  the  sufficiency  of  immediate  spiritual  insight 
secured  to  them  an  ignorant  ministry,  running  off 
not  infrequently  into  a  ranting  and  fanatic  one. 
Their  belief  that  they  could  infallibly  judge  of  the 
spiritual  qualifications  for  membership  in  their 
churches,  and  that  the  test  of  such  fitness  was  "  the 


THE  SEPARATISTS.  117 

inward  actions  of  their  own  souls,"  was  not  only  pro- 
ductive of  measureless  mistake  in  the  admission  of 
people  to  their  fellowship,  but  was  even  more  de- 
structive to  peace  among  themselves  afterward. 
Absolute  knowledge  of  one  another's  good  estate  at 
entrance  to  the  church  did  not  prevent  equally  posi- 
tive doubt  about  it  very  soon  after. 

Mutual  criticism,  censoriousness,  and  the  extrava- 
gant employment  of  church  discipline  tore  their 
churches  in  sunder.  The  few  annals  which  remain 
are  largely  annals  of  councils  called  to  adjust  quar- 
rels based  on  alleged  injustices  done  by  purgative 
processes  among  members  who  once  infallibly  knew 
each  other  to  be  "  saints,"  as  they  were  habituated 
to  call  themselves. 

Accustomed  to  the  fervors  of  a  hortatory  style  of 
address,  whose  imagery,  in  default  of  other  sources, 
was  largely  borrowed  from  the  Bible,  their  preach- 
ing, and  even  their  official  documents,  took  on  a 
kind  of  Apocalyptic  strain  which  reminds  us  of  the 
days  of  the  Roundheads  and  Fifth-Monarchy  men  in 
the  times  of  the  English  Commonwealth.  A  few 
extracts  from  manuscripts  of  official  character  in 
this  ecclesiastical  connection,  hitherto  unpublished, 
may  give  the  flavor  of  many  others. 

Rev.  Samuel  Drown,  who  had  been  apparently 
conducting  an  evangelistic  meeting  in  Providence  in 
June,  1752,  writes  to  the  Canterbury  Church  :  — 

"  I  have  been  Laboring  within  these  few  Days  in 
providence  Church  to  bring  about  the  Kingdom  to  the 


118  THE   ''GREAT  AWAKENING." 

House  of  David  but  could  not  affect  the  work  alone  .  .  . 
wherefore  I  iutreet  you  to  Gird  up  your  Liens  and  Cry 
to  god  to  Leed  you  to  the  Choice  of  faithful  Brethren 
and  send  them  by  the  order  of  the  holy  Ghost,  every 
man  with  his  sword  girt  upon  his  thy,  for  such  a  battel 
is  coming  as  you  have  scarcly  fought  here  to  fore." 

Enfield  Church,  in  tribulation  because  of  a  case  of 
discipline,  sends  out  its  call  for  a  council  in  these 
terms,  in  May,  1753  :  — 

"  May  the  God  of  Zion  give  you  to  hear  y'  Grones  of 
this  Part  of  Zion  under  her  Present  Standing,  for  we  are 
under  Broken  Surcumstances,  Divided  into  two  Parties. 
Zion  here  is  in  distress ;  the  Church  Sore  Broken  in  the 
Place  of  Dragons  .  .  .  therefore  do  we  cry  to  you  as 
Gods  witnesses  for  help." 

The  church  of  Charlestown,  divided  between  two 
candidates  for  its  pulpit,  calls  for  the  advice  of  its 
sister  churches  in  this  way :  — 

"April  26,  1752.  Dear  Brethren  We  are  Wading 
through  many  Tribulations  Toward  the  Blissfull  Shores 
of  Eternal  Day  where  we  Shant  Stand  in  Need  of  Coun- 
cils to  Inlighten  and  Direct  us  into  the  True  worship  and 
Discipline  of  the  House  of  God.  Neither  shall  we  stand 
in  Need  of  your  Witness  to  Direct  us  in  the  Choice  of 
a  Pastor.  But  O  Dear  Brethren  we  are  in  the  Militant 
State  and  Stand  in  Need  of  your  help  in  all  These. 
Therefore  our  Cry  to  our  God  and  to  you  his  Witnesses ; 
Help,  help,  help,  .  .  .  y*  Battle  goes  hard  on  the  side  of 
the  Faithfull ;  therefore  again  we  Cry  Gird  on  your 
Sword,  Mount  the  White  Horses,  and  Come  forth  to  the 


THE   SEPARATISTS.  119 

help  of  the  Lord  against  the  Mighty ;  and  as  you  hear 
the  Trumpet  sound  on  this  part  of  Zion's  walls,  the  Cer- 
tain Sound  is,  viz.  We  have  been  in  Search  of  a  Pastor 
till  many  of  us  is  Lost  in  the  Wilderness ;  for  our  Evi- 
dences Cross  each  other,  some  for  James  Simon  and 
some  for  Sam'->  Niles.  The  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  be  with  you.     Amen." 

"Our  Evidences  cross  each  other;'*  yes,  that  was 
often  the  trouble  with  the  Separatist  people. 

One  more  quotation  only,  which  has  a  kind  of 
pathetic  side  to  it,  in  spite  of  its  peculiarity.  Sister 
Hannah  Watts,  apparently  visiting  in  Boston  in 
January,  1748,  writes  home  to  the  Connecticut 
church  of  which  she  was  a  member :  — 

"  I  am  astonished.  I  am  astonished.  O  amazing, 
amazing,  amazing.  Who  do  you  think  that  it  is  that  is 
writing  to  Saints,  calling  them  brethren  in  Christ  Jesus, 
why  i  will  tell  you  who  it  is  it  is  the  very  scrapings  of 
the  bottom  of  hell  O  wonderf all  wonderfuU  i  must  tell 
you  how  my  redemtiou  looks  to  me.  Methinks  i  see 
that  blessed  redeemer  when  he  had  brought  up  all  the 
rest  of  the  elect  out  of  hell  he  missed  one  he  could  not 
rest  no  but  down  go  again  and  scrapes  the  very 
bottom  and  hottest  place  in  all  hell  to  bring  up  this  hell 
monster     O  how  unsearchable  is  that  love." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Hannah  Watts  was  an 
excellent  woman  ;  and  the  ex])erience  she  was  con- 
scious of  did  not  differ  very  much  from  that  which 
Edwards  had,  when  he  wrote  in  words  quoted  a  little 
while   ago :   ''  Infinite   upon   infinite  .  .  .  Infinitely 


120  THE  ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

deeper  than  hell."  But  it  may  be  questioned,  never- 
theless, whether  Hannah  Watts's  letter,  read  in 
church-meeting,  tended  much  to  edification. 

More  space  has  been  given  to  this  Separatist 
movement  and  to  these  Separatist  utterances  than 
perhaps  seems  proportionate  to  the  subject,  but  it 
has  been  given  intentionally,  and  for  two  reasons. 
One  is,  that  the  Separatist  endeavor  was,  in  one 
aspect  of  it,  a  direct  outcome  of  the  Revival,  and,  in- 
deed, a  kind  of  prolongation  of  some  of  its  most 
characteristic  features;  the  other  reason  is,  that 
treatment  of  the  subject  itself  has  been  compara- 
tively infrequent,  and  even  the  materials  for  its 
treatment  relatively  scanty.  The  subject  deserves  a 
fuller  investigation  than  it  has  ever  yet  received. 

With  the  gradual  disuse  of  the  Half-way  Cove- 
nant which  began  to  follow,  slowly  indeed,  the  dis- 
cussions of  Edwards  and  Bellamy,  and  of  others  later 
in  the  last  century,  one  main  principle  which  the 
Separatist  churches  stood  for  no  longer  retained 
significance.  Some  of  them  returned  to  communion 
with  the  churches  from  which  they  came  out.  A 
few  of  them  — like  the  Second  Church  in  Middle- 
town,  Connecticut,  which  still  retains  the  name  of 
''  The  Church  in  the  Strict  Congregational  Society," 
—  developed  into  strong  churches  in  connection 
with  the  general  Congregational  fellowship.  A  few 
passed  over  into  the  Baptist  communion,  toward 
which,  indeed,  their  doctrine  of  an  exclusively  re- 
generate membership,  as  set  over  against  a  member- 
ship at  least  in  part  based  on  baptism  in  infancy, 


METHODISM.  121 

rather  naturally  led  them.  Perhaps  the  larger  num- 
ber of  them  gradually  died  out;  some  of  them  in 
more  or  less  of  confusion,  scandal,  and  smoke. 

So  ended  a  chapter  of  religious  life  which  had  in 
it  a  good  deal  of  the  pathetic  and  not  a  little  of  the 
good,  mingled  with  much  that  is  of  a  less  noble  or 
interesting  kind  ;  a  chapter  which  still  awaits  its 
proper  treatment  at  the  hands  of  some  painstaking 
and  sympathetic  historian. 

The  closing  years  of  the  period  under  review  in 
this  lecture  beheld  the  introduction  into  New  Eng- 
land of  another  religious  agency  —  that  of  Metho- 
dism —  itself  the  direct  outcome  of  the  English 
revival  impulse  of  which  the  Great  Awakening  was 
the  American  counterpart.  New  England  Metho- 
dism had,  indeed,  no  direct  connection  with  the  Sep- 
aratist movement  just  described;  but,  like  that  a 
child  of  the  new  religious  quickening,  it  shared  with 
Separatism  its  fervor  in  worship  and  in  hortatory 
appeal ;  while  the  strongly --knit  organization  im- 
pressed upon  it  by  its  founder  guarded  Methodism 
from  the  excesses  in  which  Separatism  made  ship- 
wreck. Established  in  New  York  in  1766,  its  seeds 
were  unsuccessfully  planted  in  Boston  in  1772 ;  the 
short-lived  congregation  there  gathered  being  scat- 
tered by  the  turmoil  of  the  Revolutionary  War.  The 
permanent  introduction  of  Methodism  into  New 
England  was  the  work  of  the  indefatigable  Rev. 
Jesse  Lee,  whose  first  class-meeting  was  formed 
within  the  borders  of  Fairfield,  Connecticut,  in  Sep- 
tember,  1789;   and   was    followed,   through    Lee's 


122  THE   ''GREAT  AWAKENING.'' 

efforts,  before  the  close  of  1792,  by  similar  organiza- 
tions in  each  of  the  New  England  states.  Once 
firmly  established  in  New  England,  Methodism 
rapidly  became  a  considerable,  and  ultimately  a  most 
important,  factor  in  the  religious  life  of  the  region, 
though  that  development  belongs  chronologically  to 
an  epoch  subsequent  to  the  one  included  in  the 
present  lecture. 

Our  fathers  of  the  "  Standing  Order  "  looked  with 
scant  favor  on  the  Methodist  beginnings.  Their 
strong  Calvinism  viewed  the  Arminianism  of  the 
movement  with  hostility,  their  comparatively  un- 
emotional conceptions  of  the  proprieties  of  worship 
had  little  sympathy  with  the  unconventionality  of 
Methodist  services.  As  late  as  1800,  the  Hartford 
North  Association,  for  example,  voted  unanimously 
that  it  was  "  not  consistent  to  dismiss  and  recom- 
mend the  members  of  our  churches  to  the  Metho- 
dists." But  the  seed  thus  sown  at  the  close  of  the 
period  now  under  review  was  destined  to  bear  much 
fruit. 

It  was  a  distinct  gain  to  our  New  England  reli- 
gious life,  however  unwelcome  to  the  strict  Calvinists 
of  our  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  century 
churches,  that  the  Methodists  contributed  in  pre- 
senting a  type  of  Arminianism  which  was  also  fer- 
vid and  evangelistic.  Jonathan  Edwards  had  been 
moved  to  preach  the  sermons  which  were  the  imme- 
diate human  cause  of  the  spiritual  awakening  of  1734 
and  1735,  at  Northampton,  by  reason  of  the  spread 
of  "  Arminian  "  views  ;  and  New  England  controver- 


METHODISM.  123 

sialists,  throughout  the  period  of  the  Great  Awaken- 
ing, made  much  use  of  the  term  in  the  charges 
and  counter-charges  of  theologic  debate.  But  the 
"  Arminianism "  which  New  England  had  known 
was  cold,  unemotional,  chiefly  marked  by  a  negative 
attitude  toward  the  sharper  doctrines  of  Calvinism, 
by  an  exaltation  of  the  salvatory  value  of  human 
virtue,  and  by  an  unspiritual  formalism  in  worship. 
With  the  Methodist  advent  New  England  was  com- 
pelled, rather  reluctantly,  to  recognize  that  there 
was  an  Arminianism  possible  which  was  no  less 
aggressively  revivalistic  in  method,  evangelical  in 
spirit,  and  high-wrought  in  feeling  than  Edwardean 
Calvinism  itself. 

It  was  advantageous,  also,  to  the  spiritual  devel- 
opment of  New  England  that  a  religious  organiza- 
tion should  be  introduced  within  its  borders,  which 
gave  to  the  layman  more  opportunity  for  utterance, 
and  for  public  testimony  to  religious  experiences  at 
other  times  beside  his  entrance  into  churchmember- 
ship,  than  the  Congregational  churches  of  the  last 
century  afforded.  A  change  was  to  come,  indeed, 
with  the  beginning  of  the  Evangelical  Reawakening 
which  will  constitute  the  theme  of  the  next  lecture : 
the  prayer  meeting  and  the  Sunday  school  were  to 
be  taken  into  the  service  of  the  Congregational 
churches  ;  but,  in  the  period  now  under  review,  any 
form  of  worship  in  which  other  voice  was  heard  than 
that  of  the  pastor  was  rare.  The  Methodist  exhorter 
and  the  Methodist  class-meeting  met  a  spiritual  want 
which  our  churches  did  not  then  wholly  satisfy. 


124  THE   ^^  GREAT  AWAKENING:' 

Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  there  was  room  in  New 
England  for  a  more  hortatory  and  emotional  form  of 
worship  than  Congregationalism  has  always  offered. 
The  Separatist  movement  showed  clearly  that  there 
were  not  a  few  who  preferred  the  stirring  addresses 
and  fervent  prayers  of  enthusiastic  men,  even  though 
uneducated,  to  the  more  formal  and  elaborate  serv- 
ices, and  the  carefully  prepared  sermons,  which 
Congregationalism  deemed  suited  to  the  dignity  of 
its  worship.  That  desire  Methodism  met  successfully 
where  Separatism  failed ;  and  the  gain  to  New  Eng- 
land spiritual  life  has  been  permanent.  But  these 
advantages  were  mostly  still  in  the  future,  when  the 
period  now  under  contemplation  closed.  The  begin- 
nings only  of  Methodism  had  been  made,  and  its 
influence  was  as  yet  inconspicuous. 

The  general  period  of  religious  affairs  in  New 
England  which  has  occupied  attention  in  the  present 
lecture  terminated  very  differently  from  the  way  in 
which  it  commenced. 

Beginning  in  a  burst  of  spiritual  activity  which 
seemed,  to  use  a  phrase  already  quoted  from  its 
greatest  representative,  likely  to  "  make  New  Eng^ 
land  a  kind  of  Heaven  upon  Earth,"  it  ended  in 
comparative  coldness  and  torpidity  in  the  religious 
life.  The  distractions  of  doctrinal  controversy,  the 
acrimonies  of  ecclesiastical  strife,  and  the  anxieties 
of  political  conflict  reaching  forward  and  culminating 
in  the  Revolutionary  War  and  the  establishment  of 
the  Federal  Government,  diverted  attention  from 
those  considerations  of  supreme  personal  religious 


RESULTS   OF   THE  PERIOD.  '  125 

concern   which   so   occupied   this   period's   opening 
days. 

However,  let  us  not  underestimate  the  benefit  of 
that  pungent  early  experience,  or  too  darkly  judge 
the  character  of  the  years  which  followed.  Certain 
things  had  been  accomplished  which,  in  a  large  con- 
sideration of  religious  welfares,  were  of  abiding  value. 
The  churches  had  not  only  been  reinforced  by  very 
great  accessions  through  the  Revival,  but  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  they  had  been  purified.  Blows,  not 
immediately  fatal,  indeed,  but  destined  to  be  fatal,  to 
the  disastrous  Half-way-Covenant  system  of  church- 
membership  had  been  struck  ;  and  the  minds  of  men 
were  fast  opening  to  the  evils  which  that  system 
entailed.  Signs  of  its  approaching  dissolution  were 
multiplying.  And  besides  this,  in  spite  of  the  evils 
which  doctrinal  controversy  always  occasions,  there 
were  a  discipline  and  an  education  in  the  close  hand- 
ling of  religious  truth  attendant  upon  the  powerful 
discussions  of  the  great  themes  of  religious  thought 
from  Edwards  to  D wight,  from  Clap  to  Hemmenway, 
from  Chauncy  to  Brown,  which  gave  augury  that  when 
New  England  should  be  stirred  again  by  spiritual 
impulses  from  above,  the  results  might  be  expected 
to  be  more  intelligent,  more  abiding,  and,  in  some 
respects,  certainly  more  beneficent  than  any  ever 
before  experienced  in  the  land.  Such  results  were 
realized.  It  will  be  the  object  of  the  next  lecture  to 
tell  in  what  way. 


IV. 

THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

It  was  mentioned  in  the  preceding  lecture  that 
the  period  stretching  from  the  Great  Awakening 
onward  nearly  to  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, was  a  time  of  comparative  formality  and 
deadness  in  the  religious  life  of  the  people  and 
churches  of  New  England. 

Certain  contributory  causes,  —  like  the  reaction 
of  men's  feelings  from  the  excesses  of  the  White- 
fieldian  excitement ;  the  prevalence  of  ecclesiastical 
controversy ;  colonial  and  revolutionary  warfare ; 
and  the  strife  of  political  antagonism  attendant  upon 
and  following  the  establishment  of  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution,—  were  pointed  out  as  among  the  more 
recognizable  of  the  apparent  influences  which  pro- 
duced the  prevalent  indifference  of  men's  minds  to 
the  distinctly  personal  aspects  of  religious  truth  and 
duty. 

From  this  condition  of  declension  the  religious 
life  of  New  England  was  destined  to  revive  most 
powerfully  in  the  period  under  survey  in  this  lec- 
ture. Much  more  than  in  the  era  called  the  "  Great 
Awakening,"  was  a  profound  and  fruitful  spiritual 
vivification  to  move  on  men's  minds  and  character. 


DOCTRINAL  PARTIES.  127 

But,  to  understand  the  special  quality  and  the 
guiding  influences  of  this  reawakening  era  of  New 
England's  religious  life,  it  will  be  needful  to  take 
at  least  a  hasty  glance  at  the  state  of  doctrinal  be- 
lief in  this  period,  and  at  the  different  positions  of 
theological  parties. 

It  has  been  seen  that  during  the  period  from  1735 
to  about  1790,  theology  was  taking  on  more  exact 
statement,  under  the  leadership  of  a  series  of  strenu- 
ous and  powerful  thinkers ;  and,  in  spite  of  much 
spiritual  indifference,  was  getting  a  closer  grasp  on 
the  intellect  of  the  average  hearer  of  the  preaching 
of  that  time.  This  theological  thinking  had  taken 
three  main  lines. 

There  was  in  that  period,  as  has  already  been 
briefly  noted,  what,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  may 
be  called  a  Liberalizing  Movement  of  thought,  under 
the  lead  of  such  men  as  Chauncy,  Mayhew,  Briant, 
Webster,  and  Brown.  As  yet  the  tendency  of  this 
school,  which  was  destined  to  lead  on  to  fully  devel- 
oped Unitarianism,  was  not  perhaps  distinctly  recog- 
nized by  its  promoters,  —  certainly  was  not  openly 
avowed.  The  more  immediate  points  of  contrast 
between  the  teachings  of  this  class  of  able  and  culti- 
vated men  and  those  of  the  New  England  preachers 
generally,  were  the  diminished  emphasis  put  by  them 
on  the  necessity  and  merits  of  Christ's  sacrifice  as  a 
ground  of  men's  spiritual  hope,  and  the  heightened 
emphasis  placed  on  virtuous  character  as  the  most 
important  element  in  the  conditions  of  acceptance 
with  God.     This  general  school  of  thought  was,  how- 


128      THE  EVANGELICAL   REAWAKENING. 

ever,  as  yet  comparatively  small,  and  was  chiefly 
confined  to  eastern  Massachusetts.  It  did  not  very 
seriously  affect  the  processes  of  New  England's 
religious  life  till  the  dawn  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Much  more  influential,  by  weight  of  numbers  and 
of  historical  prestige,  was  a  second  general  school  of 
theologians  who  may  properly  be  called  Old-Calvin- 
ists.  They  adhered  to  the  historically  orthodox 
views  of  the  New  England  fathers  concerning  the 
sovereignty  of  God,  the  inherited  and  imputed  de- 
pravity of  man,  the  arbitrariness  and  practical  irre- 
sistibility of  grace  ;  but  they  believed  —  and  taught 
also  —  that,  though  grace  was  sovereign  in  its  be- 
stowments,  and  could  neither  be  purchased  nor  com- 
manded, it  was,  nevertheless,  generally  imparted  in 
connection  with  the  use  of  "  means "  employed  by 
the  subject  of  it ;  as,  by  his  prayers,  his  reading  of 
Scripture,  his  attendance  on  the  preaching  of  God's 
house.  Such  means,  honestly  employed,  put  men  in 
a  favorable  way  for  obtaining  the  more  special  and 
effectual  bestowments  of  divine  help  essential  to 
salvation.  And,  though  men  could  not  of  them- 
selves make  certain  the  result,  they  could  make  it 
vastly  more  probable ;  because,  though  grace  itself 
was  not  within  their  power,  the  employment  of  the 
appointed  means  of  grace  certainly  was ;  and  such 
employment  was  not  only  hopeful  as  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  its  object  in  procuring  the  ultimate  gift 
of  saving  grace,  but  it  rendered  men  less  guilty, 
while  they  thus  made  use  of  the  means,  than  tliey 
would  be  in  their  neglect.      The  "  Old-Calvinist " 


THE   OLD-CALVINISTS.  129 

position  was  well  expressed  by  Rev.  Samuel  Phillips 
of  Andover,  Massachusetts,  when  he  says  :  ^  — 

"  I  can't  suppose,  that  any  cue  .  .  .  who  at  all  Times, 
faithfully  improves  the  common  Orace  he  has,  that  is  to 
say^  is  diligent  in  attending  on  the  appointed  Means  of 
Grace,  with  a  Desire  to  profit  thereby ;  .  .  .  and  in  a 
Word,  who  walks  up  to  his  Light,  to  the  utmost  of  his 
Power,  shall  perish  for  want  of  special  and  saving 
Grace." 

Similarly,  at  a  considerably  later  period,  Rev. 
Moses  Hemmenway  said,^  of  the  "  Old-Calvinist " 
position  in  regard  to  such  duties  as  prayer,  reading 
of  the  Bible,  and  meditation  on  the  soul's  needs, 
which  Hopkinsians  stigmatized  as  useless  and  dan- 
gerous unregenerate  doings  :  — 

"  In  general,  our  observance  of  these  duties  is  required 
as  the  ordinary  method  and  means,  whereby  God  is 
pleased  to  prepare  a  sinner  for,  and  then  communicate 
to  him  that  saving  grace,  light  and  hfe,  whereby  he 
becomes  a  new  creature,  and  is  enabled  and  disposed 
unto  those  exercises  and  acts  which  are  spiritually  good, 
and  with  which,  according  to  the  gospel  promises,  eter- 
nal life  is  connected." 

Inculcations  to  the  employment  of  the  means  of 
grace  were  therefore  legitimate,  and  were  a  proper 
and  most  indispensable  part  of  the  pastoral  function. 

The  Old-Calvinist  party  was  eminently  respectable 
both    by   reason   of   numbers  and   character.      Its 

1  Orthodox  Christian  (1738),  p.  75. 

2  Heramenway's  Seven  Sermons  (1767),  p.  46. 

9 


130     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

members  were  distributed  extensively  through  New 
England,  though  preponderatingly  more  in  relative 
proportion  in  the  northern  and  eastern  than  in  the 
southern  and  western  parts.  These  latter  sections 
of  territory,  though  not  without  their  able  represent- 
atives of  the  older  type  of  theologians  just  spoken  of, 
were  more  especially  under  the  influence  of  a  third 
class  of  New  England  divines,  now  briefly  to  be 
referred  to. 

This  third  school  of  theologians  embraced  the 
representatives  of  what  was  more  or  less  oppro- 
briously  called  "  New  Light,"  or  "  New-Divinity." 
They  traced  their  doctrinal  lineage  from  Edwards, 
through  Bellamy,  Hopkins,  West,  and  Smalley. 
Not  altogether  at  agreement  among  themselves  in 
subordinate  points  of  speculation,  they  were  sub- 
stantially one  in  the  main  outlines  of  their  concep- 
tion and  support  of  religious  faith.  The  ablest  of 
these  successors  of  Edwards,  and  the  man  who  most 
powerfully  stamped  the  impress  of  his  own  intel- 
lectual convictions  and  his  moral  sentiments  on 
his  associates  and  successors,  was  Samuel  Hopkins. 
With  small  modificatioQS,  his  positions  may  be 
taken  as  the  representative  positions  of  the  New- 
Divinity  in  the  period  under  consideration  in  the 
present  lecture. 

The  sovereignty  of  God  was  never  so  affirmed  — 
speaking  now,  of  course,  of  New  England  history 
—  as  by  the  teachers  of  this  party.  It  was  a  sover- 
eignty which  reached  not  only  to  the  guidance  and 
control,  but  to  the  ultimate  causation,  of  all  events 


THE  EDWARDEANS.  131 

and  acts,  even  of  sin  itself.  Yet  sin  lies  not  in  the 
cause,  but  in  the  act ;  hence  it  was  believed  that  the 
honor  of  God  was  preserved  safe,  while  man  was  in- 
finitely guilty.  Man's  guilt,  furthermore,  is  his  own 
in  the  sense  that  he  is  not  merely  the  actual,  but  the 
sole,  author  of  it,  —  the  Old-Calvinist  theory  of  an 
inherited  or  imputed  sinfulness  being  abandoned  by 
these  theologians. 

The  essential  quality  of  sin  is  selfishness.  Every 
man  at  bottom  is  totally  selfish,  and  therefore  totally 
depraved.  All  operations  of  a  human  soul  previous 
to  its  supernatural  regeneration  —  even  those  opera- 
tions seemingly  most  disinterested  and  beneficent  — 
are  really  resolvable  into  some  form  of  self-love,  and 
are  therefore  wholly  malignant  and  sinful.  Seeking 
salvation,  even,  from  any  other  than  a  disinterested 
motive  is  simply,  as  Thomas  Shepherd  had  declared 
it  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before,  one  of  the  "  nine 
easie  wayes  ...  all  which  lead  to  hell."  ^ 

The  essential  quality  of  lioliness,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  benevolence.  God  is  infinitely  benevolent, 
and  so  infinitely  holy.  The  test  of  all  holiness  is 
benevolence,  or  love  to  being  in  general,  and  to  all 
particular  beings  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  be- 
ing each  possesses.  Hence  a  proper  criterion  of  all 
true  piety  is  a  willing  submission  to  the  disposal  of 
the  Infinite  Possessor  of  infinite  being. 

Nothing  short  of  this  unconditional  submission  is 
an  act  acceptable  to  God,  for  anything  short  of  this 
is  selfishness,  and  therefore  sin.     "  Means  of  grace," 

1  Sincere  Convert,  pp.  154,  160. 


132     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

therefore,  in  the  Old-Calvinist  sense,  there  are  none. 
To  exhort  men  to  the  use  of  "  means  "  is  to  fix  their 
attention  on  adventitious  and  even  misleading  and 
deceiving  matters,  when  the  one  only  and  instant 
obligation  of  the  sinner  is  unconditional  submission 
to  the  divine  will.  Indeed,  the  use  of  means  is  not 
merely  idle,  but  criminal.  As  Hopkins  phrases 
it:i  — 

"  Awakened,  convinced  sioners,  with  whom  most 
means  are  used,  and  who  are  most  attentive  to  the  con- 
cerns of  their  souls,  and  most  in  earnest  in  the  use  of 
means,  are  commonly,  if  not  always,  really  more  guilty 
and  odious  in  God's  sight  than  they  who  are  secure  and 
at  ease  in  their  sins." 

Or  as  Emmons  says  :  '^  — 

''The  best  desires  and  prayers  of  sinners  [are]  alto- 
gether selfish,  criminal  and  displeasing  to  God." 

Nothing  is  pleasing  but  instant  submission,  instant 
exercise  of  disinterested  and  universal  benevolence. 
And  this  man  has  natural  power  to  do;  but  no 
moral  power.  He  can  if  he  will ;  but  he  cannot 
make  himself  will.  Only  the  immediate  interposi- 
tion of  Infinite  Power,  in  pursuance  of  an  elective 
determination,  can  do  that.  Guilty,  — all  the  more 
sinful  for  every  moment's  use  of  so-called  religious 
endeavor,  short  of  the  naturally  possible  but  morally 
impossible  act  of  self-renunciation  whose  exercise 
itself  implies  a  change  of  heart,  — his  only  hope  is  in 

1  Use  of  Means  (1765),  p.  125. 

*  Autobiography,  Works,  vol.  i.,  xii. 


THE  EDWARDEANS.  133 

an  interposition  not  only  of  divine,  but  of  irresistible, 
grace.^ 

The  representatives  of  these  three  general  types 
of  religious  belief  in  New  England  were  all  person- 
ally devout  and  sincere  men ;  but  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  aggressiveness  and  zeal,  and  perhaps 
the  larger  measure  of  intellectual  ability  also,  were 
on  the  side  of  the  third,  or  New-Divinity,  advocates. 
These  were  also  often  called  Hopkinsians,  from  the 
name  of  the  most  resolute  setter-forth  of  their  dis- 
tinctive peculiarities ;  and  sometimes  still  again, 
"  Berkshire  Divinity  men,"  from  the  residence  suc- 
cessively at  Stockbridge  of  two  chief  champions  of 
the  party,  and  the  proximity  to  them  of  other  ad- 
herents of  their  views.  Representatives  of  this 
school  of  thought  were  largely  also  Yale  College 
men  ;  and  in  Connecticut  they  came  to  be  much  in  a 
majority  in  the  ministry.  They  were  substantially 
harmonious,  mutually  supporting,  and  enthusiastic 
in  their  convictions ;  and  they  were  animated  not 
only  by  the  stimulus  of  a  certain  newness  in  their 
characteristic  presentations  of  religious  truth,  but 
also,  as  they  thought,  by  the  possession  of  positive 
advantages  in  escaping  from  dilemmas  and  inconsis- 
tencies attendant  on  positions  different  from  their 
own.  It  was  in  a  self-congratulating  apprehension  of 
these  advantages,  when  compared  with  their  brethren 

1  "  Common  grace  is  granted  to  all  who  enjoy  the  light  of  the 
gospel,  while  special  grace  is  granted  to  none  but  tlie  elect.  .  .  . 
Special  grace  is  always  irresistible."  Emmons,  Works  (1842), 
V.  105. 


134     THE  EVANGELICAL   REAWAKENING. 

of  the  "  Old-Calvinist "  party,  that  they  sometimes 
called  themselves  "  Consistent-Calvinists." 

When,  therefore,  about  the  year  1797,  after  a  long 
period  of  comparative  insensibility,  there  swept  over 
the  land  one  of  those  profomid  and  pervasive  emo- 
tional stirrings,  whose  mysterious  approach  and 
whose  lasting  personal  results  devout  men  of  all 
times  ascribe  to  the  direct  agency  of  God's  Spirit,  it 
was  perfectly  inevitable,  in  the  then  existing  state  of 
New  England  thought,  that  the  revival  should  take 
on  a  distinctly  dogmatic  character ;  and  that,  more 
narrowly  still,  it  should  also  to  a  very  great  extent 
be  a  New-Divinity  revival.  Not,  indeed,  that  its 
scope  and  effects  were  measured  and  limited  by  the 
boundaries  of  New-Divinity  teachings.  It  would 
have  been  suspiciously  against  the  doctrine  of  Divine 
Sovereignty,  which  Consistent-Calvinists  so  strenu- 
ously insisted  on,  had  that  been  the  case.  But,  after 
all,  account  for  it  as  we  may,  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that,  speaking  in  a  large  and  general  sense,  and 
recognizing  very  considerable  limitations  to  the  state- 
ment, the  revival  period  which  began  in  1797,  and 
which  was  followed  at  various  epochs  by  similar 
awakenings  for  over  forty  years,  was  conspicuously 
Hopkinsian  in  character,  and  illustrative  in  experi- 
ence of  what  might  be  anticipated  as  the  results  of 
that  system  of  doctrine. 

The  revival  itself  was  widespread.  Most  powerful 
perhaps  —  certainly  in  its  earlier  stages  —  in  Con- 
necticut, it  reached  extensively  through  Massachu- 
setts, Vermont,  and  New  Hampshire.     It  took  hold 


CHARACTER   OF  THE  REVIVAL.  135 

not  on  Congregational  churches  alone,  but  on  the 
Baptist  churches  as  far  down  the  eastern  coast  as 
Penobscot  Bay.  Nor  did  it  pass  by  entirely  un- 
moved even  those  congregations  in  Boston  and  near 
vicinity  whose  pastoral  instructions  were,  however 
guardedly  expressed,  irreconcilable  with  any  historic 
form  of  New  England  divinity. 

Unlike  the  Great  Awakening  of  1740,  the  revival 
movement  of  the  years  from  1797  to  1801  was  not 
attended  by  the  outward  physical  manifestations 
which  characterized  that  display  of  religious  emo- 
tion. With  very  rare  exceptions,  and  these  chiefly 
among  Baptist  and  Separatist  assemblies,  the  bodily 
phenomena  indicative  of  alarm  or  of  hope,  of  joy  or 
of  distress,  which  then  prevailed,  were  now  absent. 
Compared  with  that  revival,  the  manifestations  of 
this  one,  like  the  presentations  of  truth  with  which 
they  were  associated,  were  distinctly,  and  even 
severely,  intellectual. 

Nor,  unlike  that  former  religious  movement,  did 
this  one  derive  its  impulse  at  all  from  the  presence 
of  a  celebrated  evangelist,  or  even  from  the  use  of 
the  itineracy  in  any  form.  Some  years  were  still  to 
elapse,  as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  note,  before 
evangelistic  itineracy  was  revived  again.  The  work 
sprang  up  almost  simultaneously  throughout  the 
churches  under  the  ministrations  of  their  own  pas- 
tors, and  progressed  under  the  visible  influence  of 
only  such  added  efforts  and  agencies  as  settled 
ministers  are  able  mutually  to  afford  one  to 
another. 


136     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

A  very  considerable  and  exceedingly  interesting 
body  of  revival  narratives  belonging  to  this  period 
remains  to  us  in  the  pages  of  the  "  Connecticut 
Evangelical  Magazine,"  and  in  compilations  derived 
from  it,  as  well  as  in  various  pamphlets  from  the 
pens  of  many  pastors  of  churches  in  different  parts 
of  New  England  where  the  work  was  conspicuously 
powerful.  These  narratives  are,  indeed,  chiefly 
furnished  by  pastors  sympathetic  with  New-Divinity 
views ;  and  probably  both  the  teachings  they  de- 
scribe as  having  been  most  effectual  in  promoting 
the  revival,  and  the  experiences  which  they  record 
of  the  converts  made  under  it,  may  over-strongly 
emphasize  the  peculiarities  of  opinion  in  which  they 
were  differenced  from  their  Old-Calvinist  brethren. 
But  we  must  avail  ourselves  of  such  resources  as  we 
have ;  and,  after  all,  the  revival  was  in  an  eminent 
degree  a  Hopkinsian  one  in  its  general  character. 
So  that  we  shall  get  close  enough  to  its  central  and 
characterizing  features  by  looking  at  it  a  moment 
through  the  eyes  of  some  of  those  who,  either  as  its 
promoters  in  the  way  of  pastoral  watch,  or  in  the 
way  of  experience  of  its  converting  power,  have  left 
us  record  concerning  it. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  there  was  a  great  uni- 
formity in  the  substance  and  proportion  of  doctrine 
enforced  by  the  preachers.  Rev.  Alexander  Gillet 
of  Torrington,  Connecticut,  says  :  ^  — 

*'  The  doctrines  made  use  of  in  carrying  on  this  work, 
is  another  distinguishing  feature  of  it.     These  are  the 

1   Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine,  i.  135. 


ITS   DOCTRINAL   TRAITS.  137 

Boul-humbling  doctrines  of  our  Saviour,  which  exalt 
God,  and  stain  all  the  pride  of  human  glory.  The 
divine  sovereignty  —  his  universal  government  —  the 
holiness,  extent  and  inflexibility  of  the  moral  law  — 
human  depravity  —  our  full  dependence  on  God  —  the 
special  agency  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  conviction  and  con- 
version —  and  mere  grace  through  Jesus  Christ  as  the 
Mediator,  and  the  only  one  :  These  have  been  kept  con- 
stantly in  view,  more  or  less,  and  proved  like  a  fire  and 
hammer  that  breaketh  the  flinty  rock  in  pieces." 

Says  Rev.  Samuel  Shepard  of  Lenox,  Massachu- 
setts, of  his  preaching  :  ^  — 

These  doctrines  "  are  such  as  are  usually  termed 
calvinistic.  Such  truths,  as  the  total  and  awful  de- 
pravity of  the  human  heart  —  the  necessity  of  regenera- 
tion ;  .  .  .  the  equity  of  the  divine  law  in  its  ])enalty  as 
well  as  precept  —  the  divine  sovereignty  in  the  salvation 
of  sinners,  as  the  only  possible  ground  of  hope  in  the 
case  of  a  guilty  offender  —  and  all  the  doctrines  essen- 
tially connected." 

Rev.  Increase  Graves  of  Bridport,  Vermont, 
writes :  ^ — 

"  In  our  religious  meetings,  the  doctrines  insisted 
upon  were  the  sovereignty  of  God,  his  purposes,  total 
moral  depravity,  moral  agency  and  accountableness, 
the  circumstances  which  render  human  actions  virtuous 
or  vicious  in  the  sight  of  God,  justification  solely  by 
faith  in  Christ,  the  nature  of  saving  faith  and  genuine 

^   Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine,  ii.  141. 

2  New  England  Revivals,  Bennet  Tyler  (1846),  p.  366. 


138     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

repentance,  the  character  of  evangelical  obedience,  the 
obligations  of  men  to  do  all  they  are  able,  just  as  much 
as  if  they  could  save  themselves  by  their  own  works  ; 
the  sure  destruction  of  those  who  forbear  all  exertions, 
and  of  those  also,  who  neglect  to  exert  themselves  in 
the  right  manner." 

These  quotations,  taken  almost  at  random  from 
the  reports  of  successful  ministers  in  these  different 
New  England  States,  will  indicate  clearly  enough 
the  close,  searching,  dogmatic  character  of  the 
pulpit  inculcations  of  those  times.  And  the  most 
searching  and  alarming  of  these  inculcations  had  a 
mysterious  kind  of  acceptableness  which  the  utterers 
of  them  attributed  to  the  immediate  energies  of 
God's  Spirit. 

Rev.  Jeremiah  Hallock  of  Canton,  Connecticut, 
records : ^  — 

''  What  are  called  the  hard  sayings,  such  as  the  doc- 
trines of  total  depravity,  of  the  decrees,  election,  and 
the  like,  were  popular." 

And  Rev.  Ammi  Robbins  of  Norfolk,  Connecticut, 
says :  2  — 

"  Those  doctrines  which  the  world  calls  '  hard  sayings ' 
are  the  most  powerful  means  in  the  hands  of  the  blessed 
spirit,  to  pull  down  and  destroy  Satan's  strong-holds  in 
the  hearts  of  sinners.  No  preaching,  or  conversation 
seems  so  effectual  to  drive  them  from  their  hiding 
places  and  refuges  of  lies,  as  to  tell  them  plainly  that 

1  Tyler's  Revivals,  p.  30. 

2  Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine,  i.  339. 


ITS  DOCTRINAL    TRAITS.  139 

they  are  eternally  imdoue,  if  the  unpromised  mercy  of 
God  is  not  displayed  in  their  favor ;  —  that  they  have 
not  the  least  claim  on  God,  and  if  he  does  not  have 
mercy  they  are  gone  forever  ;  —  that  their  eternal  state 
is  already  fixed  in  the  divine  mind  ;  and  it  concerns 
them  to  know  what  it  is  like  to  be  ;  —  that  all  they  do 
short  of  real  submission  to  God  is  wholly  selfish  ;  — 
that  they  may  as  well  despair  of  ever  helping  themselves 
first  as  last;  and  that  the  reason  why  they  don't  find 
relief  is  merely  because  they  will  not  yield  and  bow  to 
a  holy  sovereign  God." 

To  presentations  of  religious  views  so  close-jointed 
and  rigorous,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  response  — 
as  given  in  the  experiences  of  those  who  in  a  time 
of  intense  spiritual  awakening  listened  to  and  were 
molded  by  them  —  should  have  been  equally  marked 
and  profound.  Space  will  suffice  for  illustration  on 
two  or  three  points  only. 

The  sense  of  sin,  which  has  been  seen  in  the 
course  of  these  lectures  to  have  been  a  prominent 
feature  of  religious  experience  at  all  periods  of  spirit- 
ual activity,  was  here ;  but  here  with  a  difference. 
It  was  liere  in  a  very  powerful  way,  but  as  molded 
and  defined  by  a  particular  philosophical  explana- 
tion of  the  nature  of  sin ;  an  explanation  which, 
however  involved  in  the  teachings  of  Edwards  as 
long  before  as  the  Great  Awakening,  had  now  be- 
come part  of  the  common  thought  of  the  pulpit  and 
the  pews.  Sin,  in  this  view  of  it,  was  essentially 
selfishness ;  that  is,  preference  of  self  to  everything 
else,  even  to  God ;  and  so,  in  any  point  of  contrast 


140      THE  EVANGELICAL   REAWAKENING. 

of  interest  and  character  between  the  divine  and  the 
human,  really  enmity  to  God. 

We  are,  therefore,  not  surprised  to  find  scores  of 
such  expressions  of  experience  on  this  point  as  the 
following,  taken  almost  haphazard,  from  the  narra- 
tives of  that  time.  One  awakened  inquirer  comes 
to  his  pastor  and  says  :  ^  — 

''  I  find  that  all  I  do  is  selfish.  If  I  pray  or  read,  it 
is  all  selfish." 

Another,  in  the  same  condition,  says  :  ^  — 

'*  I  see  my  heart  so  opposed  to  God,  that  I  could  not 
be  happy  were  I  admitted  to  heaven ;  and  I  should 
choose  rather  to  be  in  hell  than  to  dwell  with  God." 

Still  another  is  recorded  as  saying  :  ^  — 

'*  I  hated  the  Bible,  because  it  contained  my  condem- 
nation. I  felt  that  God  was  partial  in  showing  mercy 
to  others  and  not  to  me.  The  enmity  of  my  heart 
rose  against  him  ;  and  indeed,  I  wished  there  was  no 
God.  ...  I  longed  to  be  spoken  out  of  existence,  for 
the  more  I  understood  of  the  divine  character,  the  more 
I  hated  it ;  and  I  could  not  endure  the  thought  that 
the  Lord  reigned,  and  that  all  things  were  at  his  dis- 
posal. When  I  heard  of  some  who  had  obtained  com- 
fort, and  had  not  been  so  long  in  distress  as  I  had,  my 
heart  boiled  within  me." 

This  sense  of  sin  as  opposition  to  God's  laws,  gov- 
ernment, and  character,  and  as  even  hatred  to  His 


1  Tyler's  Revivals,  p.  36. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  27. 


3  Ibid.,  p.  262. 


THE   SENSE   OF  SIN.  141 

person,  was  a  form  of  feeling  which  found  very  fre- 
quent expression.  It  is  not  at  all  an  impeachment 
of  its  genuineness,  or  even  of  its  accuracy  of  defini- 
tion, however,  to  remind  ourselves  of  its  obvious 
connection  with  philosophical  explanations  of  the 
nature  of  virtue  which,  to  some  extent  certainly, 
gave  to  conceptions  of  sin  a  character  that  had  not 
been  recognized  hitherto  in  any  equivalent  degree  in 
the  experiences  of  the  religious  life  in  New  England. 

Similarly  characteristic  of  this  new  awakening, 
in  comparison  with  any  previous  one,  was  the  view 
inculcated  and  entertained  in  all  New-Divinity  circles 
respecting  God's  disregard  of  what  were  called  "  un- 
regenerate  doings."  The  language  is  archaic  and 
uncouth,  but  the  conception  was  anything  but  a 
scholastic  one.  It  entered  into  the  strenuous  ex- 
hortations of  the  pulpit  and  the  probing  question- 
ings of  the  room  of  anxious  inquiry.  God  listens  — 
it  was  affirmed  by  the  most  distinguished  of  divines 
—  to  no  prayers  of  the  unconverted.  Dr.  Samuel 
Hopkins  wrote  an  elaborate  treatise  setting  forth  the 
alleged  fact  that  the  promises  of  the  Gospel  have  no 
application  whatever  to  unregenerate  men.^  All  un- 
regenerate  praying  is  selfish,  and  therefore  sin. 

The  thought  was  thrust  into  the  turmoil  of  anx- 
ious souls  under  the  darkest  perturbations,  with 
what  has  seemed  to  some  its  necessary  addition  of 
disquiet.  From  scores  of  recorded  instances  in  the 
volumes  referred  to,  take  one  only  :  ^  — 

1  Enquiry  Concerning  the  Promises  of  the  Gospel,  Boston,  1768. 

2  Tyler's  Revivals,  p.  329. 


142     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

"  In  July,  when  the  attention  to  religion  had  become 
considerable,  I  began  to  find  that  I  had  not  only  a 
wicked  heart,  but  that  it  was  entirely  selfish,  and  filled 
with  the  most  dreadful  and  daring  opposition  to  God ; 
and  that  selfishness  had  been,  and  still  was,  the  great 
moving  impulse  of  all  my  actions. 

''  This  put  me  to  a  great  stand.  ...  1  now  saw  that 
the  prayers  of  the  wicked  are  an  abomination  unto  the 
Lord.  Yet  I  was  told  that  prayer  was  a  duty  incum- 
bent upon  me  notwithstanding  my  own  sinfulness,  and 
that  I  ought  to  pray  with  a  penitent  heart.  This  was 
what  I  could  not  bear,  and  I  found  myself  actually  at 
war  with  God  Almighty." 

But  the  experience  of  converts  answered  to  the 
demand  ;  as,  indeed,  is  usual  in  similar  cases.  Their 
"  conviction  of  their  selfish  regards  in  all  their  at- 
tempts to  pray  led  them  to  reflect  that  their  prayer 
was  sin,''''  ^  Their  persuasion  of  the  sinfulness  of  all 
"  unregenerate  doings  "  created  in  them  a  "  uni- 
formity of  sentiment "  that  a  "  change  of  heart  .  .  . 
is  in  answer  to  no  prayer  made  by  the  subject  before 
it  takes  place."  ^ 

These  processes  and  convictions  of  mind  seem  to 
have  been  very  general.  They  led  easily  on  to  an- 
other widely  characterizing  feature  of  this  great 
religious  awakening  —  the  inculcation  and  exercise 
of  the  duty  of  "  unconditional  submission  "  to  God's 
will,  even  to  the  extent  of  readiness  to  be  lost,  if 
the  highest  interests  of  the  universe  demand  it. 

1  Evangelical  Magazine,  i.  463. 

2  Tyler's  Revivals,  p.  369. 


WILLINGNESS   TO  BE  LOST.  143 

There  has  been  occasion  to  see  that,  at  earlier 
periods  of  the  religious  history  of  the  New  England 
churches,  substantially  the  same  conception  of  duty 
was  entertained.  Hooker  and  Shepherd  inculcated 
it  at  the  very  opening  of  American  Gospel  teachings.^ 
Mrs.  Edwards  felt,  and  her  husband  practically  advo- 
cated, this  conception  of  Christian  experience  in  the 
Awakening  of  1740-1742. 

Dr.  Emmons,  himself  an  inculcator  of  this  duty  of 
unconditional  submission,  does,  however,  attempt  to 
distinguish  between  the  idea  as  Shepherd  and  Hooker 
taught  it,  and  as  New-Divinity  teachers  presented  it. 
He  says  :  ^  — 

''  I  know  indeed  that  Mr.  Hooker  and  Mr.  Shepherd 
maintained,  that  a  sinner  under  awakening  and  convic- 
tion must  be  willing  to  be  cast  off  forever,  in  order  to 
■prepare  him  for  regeneration  or  true  conversion.  This 
we  acknowledge  is  an  erroneous  opinion ;  and  no  Hop- 
kinsian  that  I  am  acquainted  with,  adopts  this  opinion." 

But  the  distinction  between  Emmons's  view  and 
Hooker's  is  more  scholastic  than  practical.  Emmons 
says  that  Hooker  demanded  this  experience  before 
conversion,  as  one  of  the  preliminary  steps  to  pre- 
pare for  conversion.  Emmons  assigns  it  a  place  in 
conversion  as  one  of  the  accompaniments  of  the 
regenerative  change.  One  can  but  think  that  if 
these  two  men  could  have  talked  together  half  an 
hour,  they  would  have  seen  that  they  meant  the 
same  thing. 

1  Ante,  p.  28. 

2  Letter  on  Moses  Stuart's  Sermon,  Park's  Emmons,  p.  398. 


144     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

The  argument  by  which  this  duty  of  unconditional 
submission  even  to  be  cast  off  forever,  if  need  be, 
was  enforced,  is  clearly  put  by  an  early  missionary 
of  the  American  Board,  Rev.  Gordon  Hall :  ^  — 

"  The  benevolent  mind  must  consent  to  the  misery  of 
a  part,  that  the  whole  may  be  perfect.  This  suffering 
part  must  be  fixed,  bearing  a  certain  proportion  to  the 
whole.  It  must  likewise  be  composed  of  a  definite  num- 
ber of  individuals.  To  this  the  benevolent  mind  must 
consent.  Now  if  the  benevolent  miud  sees,  that  this 
suffering  part  cannot  be  secured  to  its  exact  proportion 
without  its  including  himself,  must  he  not  acquiesce? 
And  if  he  is  unwilling  to  be  included  in  this  part,  does 
he  not  place  himself  in  opposition  to  the  perfection  of 
the  system  ?  The  truth  in  this  case,  I  think,  cannot  be 
mistaken." 

As  this  duty  of  submission  was  presented  in  the 
revival  of  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
it  obviously  took  a  powerful  hold,  not  merely  on  the 
processes  of  men's  intellects,  but  on  the  operations 
of  their  wills  and  hearts  in  the  crisis-hours  of  their 
spiritual  experience.  To  quote  a  few  examples  : 
Rev.  Dr.  Griffin,  writing  of  the  condition  of  things 
in  New  Hartford,  Connecticut,  in  1798  and  1799, 


"  The  subjects  of  it  [the  revival]  have  generally 
expressed  a  choice  that  God  should  pursue  the  '  deter- 
minate counsel '  of  his  own  will,  and  without  consulting 

1  Park's  Emmons,  p.  189. 

2  Evangelical  Magazine,  i.  221. 


WILLINGNESS   TO  BE  LOST.  145 

them,  decide  respecting  their  salvation.  To  the  question 
whether  they  expected  to  alter  the  divine  mind  by  prayer, 
it  has  been  answered,  '  I  sometimes  think,  if  this  were 
possible  I  should  not  dare  to  pray.'  .  .  .  Many  have  ex- 
pressed a  willingness  to  put  their  names  to  a  blank,  and 
leave  it  with  God  to  fill  it  u.p  ;  and  tliat^  because  his  hav- 
ing the  government  would  secure  the  termination  of  all 
things  in  his  own  glory." 

Another  pastor,  Rev.  Samuel  J.  Mills  of  Torring- 
ford,  Connecticut,  father  of  the  more  famous  Samuel, 
records  ^  as  the  characteristic  attitude  of  the  converts 
of  the  revival  coming  under  his  observation,  that :  — 

"  They  have  been  brought  to  resign  themselves  cheer- 
fully, without  any  reserve,  into  the  hands  of  God,  to  be 
disposed  of  as  may  be  most  for  his  glory  —  rejoicing  that 
they  were,  and  might  be,  in  the  hands  of  such  an  holy, 
just  and  wise  God,  let  their  future  situation  be  what  it 
might." 

Still  another.  Rev.  Jeremiah  Hallock  of  Canton, 
Connecticut,  gives  as  the  language  of  an  inquirer  in 
his  congregation,  and  as  language  typical  of  the  feel- 
ings of  inquirers  generally  :  ^  — 

"I  wish  you  would  pray  for  me  that  I  may  be  con- 
verted, if  God  can  convert  me,  consistently  with  his 
pleasure  and  glory.  If  not,  I  do  not  desire  it.  I  wish 
also  you  would  pray  for  my  poor  children,  that  God 
would  convert  them  ;  not  that  they  are  any  better,  or 
their  souls  worth  any  more  than  my  neighbors'." 

1  Evangelical  Magazine,  i.  pp.  28,  29. 

2  Tyler's  Revivals,  p.  32. 

10 


146     THE  EVANGELICAL   REAWAKENING. 

Such,  in  a  large  and  general  way,  were  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  religious  awakening  which,  far  more 
profoundly  than  that  of  1740,  took  hold  on  the  real 
life  of  New  England  piety,  and  which  brought  into 
the  churches  a  great  body  of  members  —  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  estimate  how  many  —  bearing  a  stamp  of 
experience  so  deep,  and  on  the  whole  so  genuine, 
that  they  were  of  inestimable  value  to  every  interest 
of  the  Christian  kingdom. 

But  this  awakening,  of  the  last  three  or  four  years 
preceding  the  opening  of  the  present  century,  is  with 
difficulty  regarded  as  an  event  by  itself.  It  was 
rather  the  beginning  of  a  series  of  such  events, 
repeated  at  irregular  intervals  for  many  subsequent 
years.  In  1805  and  1806,  there  were  great  religious 
quickenings  in  many  towns  in  Massachusetts  and 
Rhode  Island.  Again,  from  1815  to  1818,  a  wave 
of  spiritual  impulse  passed  over  the  churches,  reach- 
ing especially  with  its  blessings  tliose  of  Vermont 
and  New  Hampshire.  The  years  1820-1823,  and 
1826-1828,  were  again  years  of  great  spiritual 
refreshing  ;  and  yet  more  powerfully  those  of  1830- 
1831,  and  1840-1845;  while  what  as  yet  appears  to 
be  the  last  of  this  series  or  group  of  revivalistic 
manifestations  on  any  extensive  geographical  scale 
—  and  itself  somewhat  distinctly  differenced  in  char- 
acter from  its  predecessors  —  occurred  as  late  as 
1857-1859. 

These  spiritual  stirrings,  reaching  over  a  period 
of  sixty  years,  are  properly  enough  grouped  together 
as  possessing  a  general  similarity  of  character.     But 


EVANGELISTIC  METHODS.  147 

there  was,  in  the  first  few  years  following  1797,  the 
year  which  marked  their  commencement,  a  gradual 
modification  either  of  their  outward  method,  or  of 
the  balance  and  proportion  of  doctrinal  statement  by 
which  they  were  promoted,  which  a  careful  observer 
of  the  religious  life  developed  by  them  cannot  wholly 
overlook.  It  was  remarked  that,  at  first,  few  or  no 
itinerating  agencies  were  employed.  When  assist- 
ance was  required,  as,  in  the  stress  of  multiplied 
preaching  services  and  inquiry  meetings  it  was  nat- 
urally often  needed,  the  services  of  eminent  pastors 
who  had  been  signally  successful  in  their  own  fields, 
like  Nathan  Strong,  Edward  Dorr  Griffin,  Jeremiah 
Hallock  and  Timothy  M.  Cooley,  were  made  use  of 
to  aid  and  reinforce  the  efforts  of  the  home  laborer. 
But,  as  time  went  on,  and  as  recurrent  occasions  of 
awakened  interest  laid  their  heavy  burdens  on  pas- 
toral endeavor,  evangelistic  labor  was  called  in  to 
supplement,  and  in  some  cases  to  direct,  in  the  con- 
duct of  revival  seasons. 

Rev.  Asahel  Nettleton,  one  of  the  earliest  and  most 
successful  of  these  itinerating  evangelists,  was  soon 
followed  by  Rev.  Charles  G.  Finney,  and  they  by  a 
very  considerable  succession  of  more  or  less  able 
and  useful  laborers,  among  whom  may  be  mentioned 
Rev.  Messrs.  E.  N.  Kirk,  Jacob  Knapp,  and  Jedediah 
Burchard.  But,  as  there  was  occasion  to  notice  in 
connection  with  the  evangelistic  features  of  the  Great 
Awakening  of  1740-1742,  so  here,  evangelism  had 
its  drawbacks.  A  very  considerable  number  of  ill- 
equipped  and  indiscreet  exhorters  felt  constrained  to 


148     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

enter  the  field  as  revivalists,  introducing  measures  of 
more  than  questionable  expediency,  often  alienating 
pastors  and  people,  and,  in  some  instances,  dividing 
churches  through  the  results  of  their  extravagant  and 
unwise  procedures. 

Methods,  too,  unknown  to  the  earlier  period  of  the 
awakening,  came  into  more  or  less  accepted  employ- 
ment, like  the  "  four-days  '  meetings,"  and  the  "  anx- 
ious seat,"  as  it  was  called.  Dr.  Emmons,  himself  a 
strenuous  Hopkinsian  and  an  earnest  revivalist,  op- 
posed from  the  outset  these  "  four-days  '  meetings," 
as  tending  to  fix  attention  on  the  form  of  promoting 
an  awakening  rather  than  on  the  power  by  which  the 
awakening  was  itself  energized.  Ultimately,  prob- 
ably, his  objections  were  justified,  the  "  four-days ' 
meetings  "  becoming  a  kind  of  religious  fetish  ;  but, 
for  a  while,  they,  and  even  the  "  anxious  seat,"  — 
to  which,  as  employed  by  Mr.  Finney,  both  Mr. 
Nettleton  and  Dr.  Beecher  strongly  demurred,^  — 
seemed  to  be  useful  instruments  in  carrying  on  the 
revival  work. 

More  important,  though  less  a  matter  of  obser- 
vation, as  period  succeeded  to  period  in  this  more 
than  a  half-century  of  successive  waves  of  religious 
quickening,  were  certain  intellectual  and  doctrinal 
changes  —  which  were  partially  recognizable  at  the 
time,  but  are  now  more  clearly  discerned  —  in  the 
preaching  which  accompanied  these  awakenings. 
Not,  indeed,  that  these  changes  were  uniform  and 

1  Letters  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beecher  and  Rev.  Mr.  Nettleton  on  the 
New  Measures  in  promoting  Revivals  of  Religion  [1828]. 


MODIFICATION  OF  DOCTRINE.  149 

universal.  On  the  contrary,  the  extreme  Hopkinsian 
type  of  doctrine,  which  was  so  general  in  1797,  was 
never  without  its  occasional  exponents  in  any  awak- 
ening afterward.  It  found,  indeed,  as  to  some  of  its 
main  positions,  one  of  its  ablest  advocates  in  Rev. 
Charles  G.  Finney  during  the  revival  of  1857-1859, 
at  Boston.  While  conducting  a  series  of  meetings 
in  Park  Street  Church  at  this  period,  Mr.  Finney,  in 
a  sermon  from  the  text  in  Proverbs,  "  The  plowing 
of  the  wicked  is  sin,"  set  forth  a  view  of  the  guilti- 
ness and  the  obnoxiousness  to  God  of  all  actions  of 
men  antecedent  to  conversion,  the  strenuousness  of 
which  no  Hopkinsian  or  Emmonsite  could  ever  have 
surpassed. 

But,  after  all,  a  certain  real,  however  often  insen- 
sible, change  was  gradually  altering  the  tone  and 
emphasis  of  the  revival  utterances.  There  was  a 
shading  away  of  the  Hopkinsian  peculiarities.  There 
was  less  insistence  on  the  utter  inutility  of  all  en- 
deavors of  men  to  bring  themselves  into  a  way  of 
repentance  and  faith  ;  and  there  was  less  demand  for 
the  particular  form  of  self-renunciation  which  had 
been  called  —  perhaps  inexactly  but  popularly  —  a 
"  willingness  to  be  damned."  As  a  consequence,  the 
type  of  experience  developed  in  connection  with  the 
awakenings  of  1830-1831  and  1840-1841  shows  a 
clear  variation  from  that  of  earlier  revivals ;  while, 
respecting  the  awakening  of  1857-1859,  there  was  so 
marked  a  change,  especially  in  the  absence  of  any 
considerable  doctrinal  impress  or  of  any  profound 
sense  of  sin,  that  some  good  men  who  remembered 


150     THE  EVANGELICAL   REAWAKENING. 

former  awakenings  were  almost  disposed  to  question 
its  genuineness. 

Two  causes  combined  to  effect  this  progressive 
alteration  in  the  type  of  revival  utterances. 

One  was  the  position  taken,  on  the  question  of 
"  unregenerate  doings,"  by  a  man  who  by  all  ante- 
cedents of  birth  and  education  —  as  Edwards's 
grandson  and  Yale  College's  graduate  and  presi- 
dent —  ought  to  have  been  a  docile  follower  of  the 
Newport  divine.  On  the  contrary,  President  Dwight 
sided  on  this  point  with  Old-Calvinists  like  Phillips 
and  Hemmenway  and  Hart,  and  taught  ^  that 
"  Ministers  ought  to  advise  and  exhort  sinners  to 
use  the  Means  of  Grace."  He  affirmed,  indeed,  that 
all  actions  previous  to  regeneration,  so  far  as  they 
possess  a  moral  quality,  are  sinful ;  but  that  in  the 
"  cries  of  a  suffering  creature  for  mercy  "  he  was 
unable  to  hear  anything  "  of  a  sinful  nature,"  or 
to  see  any  reason  why  "  the  prayers  of  such  a  sinner 
may  not  be  objects  of  Divine  Benevolence."  And, 
in  general,  as  to  the  performance  or  non-perform- 
ance of  so-called  religious  actions  by  unregenerate 
men,  he  argued  that  both  in  respect  to  society,  the 
man  himself,  and  the  quality  of  the  action  in 
its  own  nature,  the  man  was  "  less  sinful  when 
he  performs  the  act  than  when  he  neglects  or 
refuses  to  perform  it."  This  moderate  and  prac- 
tical view  of  the  nature  of  "  unregenerate  doings  " 
was  essentially  that  which  Old-Calvinism  had 
maintained.      The    controversy    between    Hopkins 

1  Theology  iv.  pp.  38-74. 


DWIGHT  AND   TAYLOR.  151 

and  West  on  the  one  side,  and  Hart,  Hem- 
menway,  and  Moses  Mather  on  the  other,  had  been 
long  continued  and  voluminous  on  this  point.  But 
the  Old-Calvinist  position  was  now  adopted  by  a 
man  who  by  blood  and  breeding  should  have  been 
a  Hopkinsian ;  a  man,  moreover,  who  spoke  with  the 
j)ersuasiveness  of  an  eloquent  orator  from  that 
position  of  conspicuity  and  influence,  the  college 
pulpit.  Dwight's  plain,  luminous  manner  of  dis- 
course, leveled  to  the  easy  apprehension  of  average 
men  and  of  college  students,  did  much  to  modify, 
as  the  revival  era  went  on,  the  extremer  statements 
which  accompanied  its  opening. 

The  other  source  of  an  altered  tone,  discernible 
in  the  later  stages  of  the  revivalistic  epoch,  was  the 
appeal  made  to  self-love  as  a  legitimate  motive  to 
repentance  and  a  change  of  heart  by  what  came 
to  be  known  as  "  New  Haven  Theology,"  as  de- 
veloped by  Rev.  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor.  Here,  again, 
it  may  be  said  that  the  New  Haven  Divinity  did 
little  more,  on  this  point,  than  revert  to  the  Old- 
Calvinist  position.  The  question  of  the  possibility 
of  a  sinless,  and  even  of  a  virtuous  and  beneficent, 
self-love  had  been  a  distinct  and  elaborately  argued 
matter  of  debate  between  Hopkins  and  Hemmen- 
way,  Mather  and  Hart,  to  the  extent  of  many  an 
acrimonious  and  toilsome  pamphlet  half  a  century 
before. 

Dr.  Taylor  and  his  followers  did,  indeed,  assert 
that  true  self-love  and  disinterested  benevolence 
were   not  variant,  but   harmonious.     But   to   Hop- 


152     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING, 

kinsians,  who  identified  self-love  with  sinfulness, 
and  whose  whole  phraseology  of  argument  and  ex- 
hortation was  framed  to  that  conception,  the  idea 
was  obnoxious  that  there  was  any  sense  in  which 
regard  to  himself  by  an  unregenerate  man  could  be 
the  ground  of  legitimate  evangelical  appeal.  Very 
likely  the  phrase  "  self-love "  was,  in  the  existing 
state  of  New  England  theological  dialect,  an  unfor- 
tunate one  to  express  the  idea  of  that  regard  to  one's 
full  and  highest  interests  which  Dr.  Taylor  meant 
to  signify  by  it.  But  Bishop  Butler  had  used  the 
phrase,  and  in  the  same  significance,  a  hundred 
years  before.  The  Hopkinsian  vocabulary  had, 
however,  no  room  for  the  term  except  for  uses  of 
denunciation. 

So  far  as  the  view  of  the  New  Haven  school 
prevailed,  it  necessarily  modified  the  Hopkinsian 
position,  to  which  it  was  opposed  ;  and  it  certainly 
did  modify  the  extremer  forms  of  Hopkinsian  ex- 
pression even  in  the  case  of  many  preachers  who 
did  not  accept  the  New  Haven  Theology.  So  that 
the  later  awakenings  of  1830-1831, 1840-1841,  and 
1857-1859  were,  in  the  preaching  which  attended 
them  and  in  the  experiences  developed  by  them, 
much  less  distinctively  marked  by  the  Hopkinsian 
type  than  were  those  earlier  in  the  series. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  however,  it  cannot  well  be 
questioned  that  the  movement  derived  its  main 
source  and  received  its  chief  impulse  from  that 
school  of  New  England  thought  which  —  from  the 
uncompromising  vigor  with  which  Samuel  Hopkins 


NEW  HAVEN  THEOLOGY.  153 

set  forth  the  main  principles  of  its  close-jointed 
and  robust  theology — has  come  to  bear  the  name 
of  that  solemn  thinker  of  Great  Barrington  and 
Newport. 

The  importance  of  this  general  revival  move- 
ment, reaching  as  it  did  over  two  generations  of 
New  England  life,  cannot  possibly  be  overestimated. 
Whether  sympathized  with  or  disliked,  its  signifi- 
cance as  a  great  mental  and.moral  phenomenon  was 
never  approached  in  magnitude  by  any  other  re- 
ligious movement  in  New  England.  For,  aside  from 
those  effects  on  the  individual  and  collective  reli- 
gious life  of  the  people  who  came  under  its  power 
that  constitute  the  results  of  the  revival  with  which 
these  lectures  have  primarily  to  do,  there  were  other 
more  organic  and  institutional  effects  too  closely 
related  to  the  awakening  to  allow  them  to  be  passed 
by  wholly  unnoticed. 

The  great  missionary  movements,  home  and 
foreign  alike,  in  the  Congregational  and  Baptist 
denominations,  which  characterized  the  early  years 
of  this  century,  had  their  roots  in  the  revival. 

The  General  Association  of  Connecticut,  in  the 
year  1798,  resolved  itself  into  the  Connecticut  Mis- 
sionary Society,  with  the  avowed  purpose  "  to 
Christianize  the  Heathen  in  North  America  and 
to  support  and  promote  Christian  knowledge  in 
the  New  Settlements  of  the  United  States."  To 
promote  this  enterprise,  it  began  to  publish  the 
"  Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine  "  in  1800,  and 
received  its  charter  of  incorporation  in  1802.     Fol- 


154     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

lowing  Connecticut,  only  a  year  later,  Massachusetts 
formed  its  Missionary  Society  in  1799,  and  in  1803 
established  its  "  Missionary  Magazine  "  for  the  pur- 
pose of  promoting  intelligence  on  the  subject.  New 
Hampshire  established  a  similar  Society  in  1801,  and 
Vermont  in  1807. 

The  Baptists  were  hardly  behindhand  —  handi- 
capped though  they  had  been  by  adverse  legislation 
and  social  disadvantage  —  in  this  newly  awakened 
zeal  for  tlie  extension  of  the  Gospel.  In  Massachu- 
setts they  organized  a  Missionary  Society  in  1802, 
and  in  the  following  year  began  the  publication  of 
a  magazine  in  its  interest.  Connecticut  Baptists 
came  into  missionary  organization  in  1811. 

The  societies  thus  far  mentioned  —  to  which  a 
Religious  Tract  Society  in  Vermont  in  1808,  and 
Bible  Societies  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  in 
1809,  might  appropriately  be  added  —  were  all  or- 
ganized for  evangelistic  work  in  our  own  land.  But 
the  newly  kindled  sense  of  responsibility  for  the 
souls  of  other  men  —  a  view  of  duty  which  was  the 
natural  and  necessary  result  of  the  New-Divinity 
doctrine  of  benevolence  —  could  not  content  itself 
with  endeavors  after  the  lost  in  America  only. 
Was  not  the  whole  world  lying  in  wickedness  ? 
Had  it  not  been  the  fond  anticipation  of  Jonathan 
Edwards,  nearly  seventy  years  before,  when  he 
wrote  his  treatise  designed  to  "  promote  a  Visible 
Union  of  God's  People  in  Extraordinary  Prayer 
for  the  Revival  of  Religion  and  the  Advancement  of 
Christ's  Kingdom  on  Earth,"  that  the  time  for  the 


MISSIONARY  EFFORT.  155 

Gospel's  proclamation  to  all  nations  had  nearly 
come  ?  Had  not  grim  Samuel  Hopkins,  as  long  ago 
as  1773,  united  with  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles  in  an  appeal  to 
the  churches  to  send  missionaries  to  Africa,  as  well 
as  to  liberate  African  bondmen  held  in  American 
slavery  ?  Missionary  endeavor  could  no  longer  limit 
itself  to  American  soil;  and  so  the  year  1810  saw 
the  organization  of  the  American  Board  of  Commis- 
sioners for  Foreign  Missions,  designed  for  the  joint 
cooperation  of  Congregation alists  and  Presbyterians 
in  carrying  the  Gospel  to  heathen  shores.  Baptist 
Christians  in  Massachusetts  followed,  two  years 
later,  with  the  "  Salem  Bible  Translation  and 
Foreign  Missionary  Society,"  which  was  the  fore- 
runner of  their  Missionary  Union,  organized  in  1814  ; 
and  the  Methodist  Missionary  Society  came  into  being 
in  1819. 

In  a  very  similar  way,  the  parentage  of  Andover, 
Bangor,  New  Haven,  and  East  Windsor  —  now  Hart- 
ford —  Theological  Seminaries  among  the  Congre- 
gationalists,  and  Newton  Theological  Institution 
among  the  Baptists,  is  distinctly  traceable  to  the 
revival  influences  of  the  opening  part  of  the  century. 
The  seminary  at  Andover,  founded  in  1808,  was  the 
result  of  a  joint  movement  of  an  Old-Calvinist  party 
and  of  a  Hopkinsian  one,  on  the  basis  of  a  creed, 
drawn  up  with  almost  incredible  painstaking,  to  in- 
clude just  as  much  of  the  peculiarities  of  each  party 
as  would  not  exclude  the  participation  in  the  result- 
ant symbol  of  the  other ;  —  a  creed  which  was  estab- 
lished as  the  standard  of  doctrine  "  permanent "... 
"  as  the  moon  and  stars  forever." 


156      THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

The  seminary  at  East  Windsor,  founded  in  1834, 
was  planted  to  offset  the  errors  into  which  its 
supporters  believed  the  New  Haven  institution  had 
fallen,  through  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Taylor  and  his 
conceptions  of  sin  and  the  office  of  self-love ;  at  the 
latter  of  which  alleged  errors  we  had  occasion  to 
glance  a  few  moments  ago.  But,  differing  in  what 
may  be  called  their  secondary  cause  as  these  various 
institutions  did,  and  expressive  as  they  were  of  at 
least  four  recognizably  diverse  tendencies  or  habi- 
tudes of  thought  on  certain  speculative  points  of 
theology  in  New  England,  they  all,  and  all  equally, 
came  out  of  the  heat  and  glow  of  the  revival  move- 
ment of  the  century's  opening  days  ;  were  primarily 
identical  in  their  purpose  to  uphold,  and  to  qualify 
their  students  to  uphold,  that  Gospel  the  funda- 
mentals of  which  they  all  held  ;  and  in  their  very 
variousness  were  a  witness,  not  to  the  meageriiess, 
but  to  the  abounding  vigor  and  fullness,  of  New 
England's  religious  life. 

Nor  would  it  be  right  wholly  to  overlook,  among 
the  less  organic,  but  perhaps  not  less  important, 
results  of  the  two  generations  of  revival  movements, 
certain  considerable  changes  wrought  in  other  direc- 
tions having  a  distinct  bearing  on  the  type  of  reli- 
gious life  in  New  England. 

The  opening  of  the  revival  era,  in  1797,  saw  the 
Half-way-Covenant  system,  though  sorely  wounded 
and  argumentatively  discredited,  still  largely  in 
operation  among  the  churches.  Before  the  close  of 
the   period  it  had   vanished  from  existence.     The 


SOCIAL    USAGES  MODIFIED.  157 

system  could  not  stand  the  intense  emphasis  which 
the  series  of  awakenings  had  put  upon  the  necessity 
of  personal  religious  experience  as  the  only  proper 
condition  of  membership  in  a  Christian  church. 
And  so,  long  before  this  series  of  awakenings  had 
terminated,  the  system,  founded  on  another  and  in- 
compatible theory  of  church-fellowship,  itself  died. 
Gradually  waning,  apparently  its  last  breath  was 
drawn  about  1825  or  1828. 

An  interesting  and  important  change,  too,  came 
about  in  this  period,  which  largely  modified  the  gen- 
eral habits  of  the  Christian  community  in  reference 
to  temperance  and  to  certain  forms  of  social  amuse- 
ment. At  the  opening  of  the  era  under  present 
review,  ardent  spirits  were  in  quite  general  use 
among  religious  people ;  were  furnished  at  most 
social  and  ecclesiastical  gatherings  ;  were  tendered 
by  ministers  of  the  Gospel  to  their  calling  brethren 
and  to  parishional  visitors;  while  a  not  infrequent 
accompaniment  of  the  induction  of  a  new  minister 
into  his  office  was  a  dinner  well  set  out  with  alco- 
holic inspirations,  followed  in  the  evening  by  an 
ordination  ball. 

So  distinguished  and  able  a  minister  as  Rev. 
Nathan  Strong  of  the  First  Church,  Hartford,  Con- 
necticut, was  not  discredited  in  character  by  owning 
and  conducting  a  distillery  plant  within  sixty  rods 
of  his  church  door.  From  1790  to  1796  —  the 
year  before  the  great  revivals  commenced  —  the 
business  was  an  extensive  one  on  the  pastor's  part. 
The  records  of  Hartford  land  transfers  show  some 


158     THE   EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

twenty  deeds  of  real  estate,  involving  thirty  or  forty 
thousand  dollars'  worth  of  property,  bought  and 
sold  by  Mr.  Strong  and  his  brother-in-law,  Reuben 
Smith,  under  the  title  of  Reuben  Smith  &  Co.,  the 
pastor's  name  generally  taking  the  priority  in  the 
deeds  made  to  or  by  the  partners.  Other  transac- 
tions related  to  the  vats,  stills,  and  cooper  shops 
used  in  the  prosecution  of  their  enterprise. 

The  close  of  the  period  under  survey  saw  the 
general  banishment  of  wines  and  liquors,  alike  from 
convivial  household  use  and  from  special  festive 
occasions.  Exceptions  doubtless  existed,  but  they 
were  exceptions  soberly  animadverted  upon  and  only 
the  more  confirmative  of  the  rule.  While,  not  only 
was  the  ordination  ball  discontinued,  but  balls  in 
general  were,  in  all  evangelical  circles,  discounte- 
nanced ;  and  even  private,  social  dancing  was  gener- 
ally frowned  upon  as  incompatible  with  that  severer 
standard  of  morals  and  religion  which  the-  revival 
had  begotten. 

Meantime,  to  turn  our  attention  for  a  moment  to 
the  so-called  Liberal  School  in  religious  matters 
referred  to  at  the  outset  of  this  lecture,  —  and  in  so 
doing  to  bring  our  survey  to  a  close,  —  it  is  to  be 
said  that  there  was  change  and  progress  here  as 
well  as  among  theologians  of  the  older  types. 

The  representatives  of  Liberal  Theology  were  not 
numerous,  and  they  were  limited  in  locality  almost 
entirely  to  eastern  Massachusetts.  But  they  were 
cultivated  and  able  men.  They  occupied  many  of 
the  leading  pulpits  of  Boston  and  its  vicinity,  and 


UNITARIANISM.  159 

they  challenged  a  well-nigh  controlling  influence  in 
the  government  of  Harvard  College.  The  very 
different  conception  they  had  come  to  entertain  of 
the  sinfulness  of  man's  nature,  and  of  the  necessity 
of  the  direct  interposing  energies  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  for  man's  rescue,  had  long  made  a  great 
contrast  between  the  tone  of  their  inculcations  and 
those  of  either  the  Old-Calvinists  or  the  Hopkin- 
sians  about  them.  The  character  of  their  preaching 
is  well  illustrated  in  the  peroration  of  the  sermon 
of  Rev.  William  Emerson,  father  of  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  and  pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston, 
which  was  delivered  some  years  before  anything 
like  a  formal  separation  of  the  Boston  churches  into 
Orthodox  and  Unitarian  had  come  to  pass,  on  the 
interesting  occasion  of  the  entrance  of  that  old 
church  of  Cotton,  Norton,  Davenport,  Allen,  and 
Foxcroft  into  a  new  house  of  worship.  The  genial 
and  accomplished  pastor  of  this  historic  organiza- 
tion, pointing  out  the  value  of  the  sanctuary  of 
divine  worship  as  preparing  for  the  rest  of  the 
heavenly  home,  concludes  with  this  appeal :  ^  — 

"  Let  us  be  virtuous,  my  brethren,  and  this  presence 
of  God,  this  rest,  shall  be  ours.  By  a  proper  reverence 
of  God's  house  and  worship  on  earth,  we  shall  obtain  a 
seat  in  the  mansions  of  heaven." 

But  more  vigorous  advocates  of  what  it  was  the 
custom   of  the  time  to  call  a  "  rational  theology  " 

1  Historical  Sketch  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston  [1812],  p.  256. 


160     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

were   in  the  field   than  the   kindly  pastor   of  the 
Boston  First  Church. 

William  Ellery  Channing  had  been  installed  at 
the  Federal  Street  Church  in  June,  1803.  In  Novem- 
ber, 1803,  the  "Monthly  Anthology "  began  to  be 
published  as  an  organ  of  liberal  thought  and  as  an 
offset  to  the  teachings  of  the  Orthodox  "  Massachu- 
setts Missionary  Magazine."  Joseph  Stevens  Buck- 
minster  became  pastor  at  the  Brattle  Street  Church 
in  January,  1805.  In  February  of  this  same  year, 
the  struggle  for  the  chair  of  the  Hollis  Professorship 
of  Divinity  in  Harvard  College,  which  had  been 
made  vacant  by  the  death  of  the  Old-Calvinist,  Dr. 
David  Tappan,  terminated,  after  two  years  of  contest, 
in  the  appointment  of  Rev.  Henry  Ware,  the  Liberal 
candidate,  —  an  event  which  marked  the  transfer- 
ence of  this  first-born  child  of  Puritanism,  and 
school  of  its  prophets  for  nearly  six  generations,  from 
the  Orthodox  to  the  Liberal  side.  Events  now  moved 
forward  with  more  celerity.  The  alarm  felt  at  what 
was  regarded  as  a  subversion  of  the  original  intent 
of  the  fathers  in  the  foundation  of  Harvard  College, 
drove  the  Orthodox,  both  of  the  Old-Calvinist  and 
the  Hopkinsian  schools,  to  unite  in  the  establish- 
ment of  a  new  theological  seminary  at  Andover, 
opened,  as  has  been  said,  in  1808.  The  impulse  of 
this  event,  followed,  in  1809,  by  the  organization  of 
Park  Street  Church  in  Boston  on  a  definitely  out- 
spoken evangelical  creed,  and  the  coming  into  the 
adjacent  ministry  of  three  able  exponents  of  Ortho- 
dox views  —  Joshua  Huntington  at  the  Old  South 


UNITARIANISM.  161 

Church,  Boston,  in  1808,  John  Codman  at  Dorchester 
in  the  same  year,  and  Edward  Dorr  Griffin  at  the 
newly  formed  Park  Street  Church,  in  1811  —  gave  to 
the  evangelical  party  a  stimulus  which  had  long 
been  lacking  in  the  somewhat  rarefied  atmosphere 
of  Boston  liberalism.  The  lines  were  thus,  month 
by  month,  more  definitely  drawn.  "  The  Monthly 
Anthology  "  on  the  one  side,  and  the  "  Panoplist," 
which  had  been  established  as  the  evangelical  organ 
in  1805,  on  the  other,  kept  the  issues  in  debate 
before  the  popular  eye.  The  annual  sermons  before 
the  Massachusetts  Ministerial  Conventions  were 
made  the  occasion  of  more  formal  presentations  of 
the  same  issues  to  the  clerical  mind.  In  his  sermon 
on  such  an  occasion  in  1810,  Rev.  Dr.  Porter  of 
Roxbury  said,  concerning  the  doctrines  of  :  — 

"  Original  Sin,  a  Trinity  in  Unity,  the  Mere  Humanity, 
Super- Angelic  Nature,  or  Absolute  Deity  of  Christ,  and 
the  Absolute  Eternity  of  Punishment  ...  I  cannot 
place  my  finger  on  any  one  article  in  the  list  of  doctrines 
just  mentioned,  the  belief  or  rejection  of  which  I  con- 
sider essential  to  the  Christian  faith  or  character." 

To  such  a  statement  as  this,  on  an  occasion  so 
public  and  official,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
adherents  of  the  older  faith  should  respond  by 
declining  any  longer  to  afford  to  those  wiiose  views 
it  represented  that  sign  of  fellowship  in  doctrine 
implied  in  pulpit  exchange,  — a  course  of  action 
which,  originated  by  Dr.  Codman  of  Dorchester,  and 
sustained   by   ecclesiastical   councils,  did   much   to 


162     THE  EVANGELICAL  REAWAKENING. 

make  visible  to  the  general  eye  a  line  of  cleavage 
which  had  long  existed  in  spirit. 

An  almost  fortuitously  raised  discussion  in  1815, 
over  a  chapter  on  "  American  Unitarianism  "in  an 
English  book  —  Belsham's  ''  Life  of  Lindsey  "  — 
widened  the  breach,  and  as  a  recent  Unitarian  his- 
torian of  his  own  denomination  has  said,^  availed  to 
*'  force  the  hand "  of  the  Liberals  and  to  compel 
their  adoption  of  a  cognomen  which  they  had  not 
been  quite  ready  to  accept. 

But  the  cleavage  was  now  really  complete. 
"  Rational  Theology,"  as  its  advocates  preferred  to 
call  it,  had  become  a  distinct,  though  geographically 
circumscribed,  factor  in  New  England  religious 
thought. 

Whatever  was  still  lacking  in  its  doctrinal  indica- 
tion of  separation  was  supplied  by  the  sermon  of 
Channing  at  the  ordination  of  Rev.  Jared  Sparks 
at  Baltimore  in  1819  ;  and  the  celebrated  Dedham 
decision  of  the  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court  in 
1820,  the  ultimate  effect  of  which  was  to  give  above 
eighty  societies,  historically  connected  with  Ortho- 
dox churches,  into  Unitarian  control,  sufficiently 
marks  the  status  of  the  new  party  on  the  ecclesias- 
tical side.  Henceforth,  for  good  or  ill,  Liberalism 
—  ranging  in  degree  from  the  Arianism  of  Channing 
to  the  Rationalism  of  Parker — was  a  factor  to  be 
taken  account  of  in  all  estimates  of  New  England's 
religious  life.  It  was  on  the  soil  first  settled  by  the 
Puritans  that  this  altered  view,  alike  of  God  and  of 

1  Allen's  Unitarianism  since  the  Reformation,  p.  192. 


UNITARIANISM.  163 

man,  had  its  American  beginnings,  and  in  the  pulpits 
of  the  successors  of  Elder  Brewster,  John  Cotton, 
and  Increase  Mather  that  it  became  most  strongly 
intrenched.  So  largely  did  it  dominate  Boston  and 
its  immediate  vicinity  that  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher,  writ- 
ing of  the  time  of  his  arrival  in  that  city  in  182o, 
said,  with  some  little  exaggeration  perhaps,  but  with 
substantial  truth :  — 

"All  the  literary  men  of  Massachusetts  were  Unita- 
rian ;  all  the  trustees  and  professors  of  Harvard  College 
were  Unitarian;  all  the  elite  of  wealth  and  fashion 
crowded  Unitarian  churches ;  the  judges  on  the  bench 
were  Unitarian,  giving  decisions  by  which  the  peculiar 
features  of  church  organization  so  carefully  ordered  by 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers  had  been  nullified." 

Over  against  Old-Calvinism  and  New-Divinity 
alike,  or  any  modification  of  them  which  holds  to 
the  sinfulness  and  loss  of  human  nature,  the  neces- 
sity and  reality  of  a  divine  atonement,  and  redemp- 
tion by  interposing  grace,  there  were  now  found,  — 
what  apparently  are  long  to  continue  as  disagreeing 
and  opposing  currents  in  the  religious  life  of  our 
New  England  churches  and  communities,  —  the  con- 
ceptions of  human  nature  as  dignified  and  un- 
depraved,  of  salvation  by  cultivation  rather  than  by 
faith,  of  self-acquired  character  as  the  ground  of 
divine  acceptance  and  of  the  intellectual  and  moral 
unity  of  God  and  man. 

It  is  not  the  design  of  these  lectures  to  pronounce 
between  positions  so  opposite  and  irreconcilable. 


V. 

THE  CURRENT  PERIOD. 

In  approaching  the  aspect  of  the  religious  life  of 
New  England  to  be  considered  in  this  lecture  some 
embarrassment  necessarily  arises.  It  is  the  embar- 
rassment which  always  attends  an  attempt  to  state 
impartially  the  true  character  and  significance  of 
current  traits  and  tendencies.  If,  even  when  things 
are  set  in  a  background  of  historic  perspective,  it  is 
very  difficult  to  present  them  with  perfect  justice  to 
the  eye,  much  more  is  it  so  when  he  who  speaks  and 
they  who  hear  are  in  a  manner  a  part  of  the  things 
spoken  of ;  when  they  have  been  molded  by  the  influ- 
ences which  have  made  the  period  what  it  is ;  are 
in  the  very  current  of  its  flow,  and  have,  almost 
inevitably,  a  definite  feeling  of  satisfaction  or  of 
disquiet  respecting  the  condition  of  things  about 
them,  and  the  direction  in  which  they  are  seem- 
ingly making  progress.  The  embarrassment  can- 
not be  avoided,  however,  except  at  the  cost  of  not 
attempting  to  make,  or  at  least  not  attempting  to 
express,  any  estimate  respecting  what  after  all  is 
the  most  interesting  period  to  every  man,  —  his  own 
period,  —  and  of  having  no  opinion  whatever  con- 
cerning that  which  concerns  him  most. 


THE   CIVIL    WAR,  165 

Doing,  then,  the  best  possible,  let  as  impartial  a 
survey  as  circumstances  permit  be  taken  of  the 
aspect  of  the  religious  life  presented  in  New  England 
in  that  portion  of  its  history  which,  for  convenience, 
may  be  considered  as  reaching  from  the  last  event 
spoken  of  in  the  previous  lecture  —  the  revival  of 
1857-1859  —  to  the  present  time,  —  a  period,  that 
is,   of  about  thirty-seven  years. 

The  epoch  opened  in  the  thick  of  the  great  politi- 
cal and  moral  debate  on  the  slavery  question  in 
the  United  States,  —  a  debate  which  was  just  about 
passing  from  the  arena  of  discussion  with  tongue 
and  pen  to  the  field  of  arms  and  blood. 

All  the  country  over,  but  especially  here  in  New 
England,  the  moral  sense  of  the  people  had  been 
for  years  in  a  process  of  strenuous  exercise  and 
education  in  reference  to  the  great  public  wrong 
and  danger  of  the  chattel  bondage  of  men  and 
women,  multitudes  of  whom  were  as  truly  and  as 
formally  members  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in  this 
land  as  were  any  of  its  inhabitants.  The  crime 
against  man  and  the  sin  against  God,  of  this  great 
iniquity,  had  slowly  indeed,  but  surely  and  at  last 
irresistibly,  been  coming  home  to  men's  bosoms, 
till  what  was  stigmatized  on  the  floor  of  Congress 
as  the  "New  England  conscience,"  which  was  in 
truth  pretty  much  also  the  whole  Northern  con- 
science, became  thoroughly  aroused.  What  fol- 
lowed is  written  in  letters  of  fire  and  blood  on  the 
ineffaceable  pages  of  history. 

The  war  was  a  great  patriotic  outburst  of  emotion 


166  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

and  energy,  the  central  and  viTifying  principle  of 
which  was  a  moral  one.  For  the  time,  all  lesser 
or  baser  interests  were  in  most  minds  subordinated 
to  the  great  and  dominating  claims  of  patriotism 
and  humanity. 

It  is  not  strange,  that  under  the  pressure  of  this 
outgoing  and  absorbing  interest  in  public  and 
racial  concerns,  the  more  private  considerations  of 
individual  relationship  to  religious  truth  and  to 
the  Christian  Church  should  have  been  relatively 
obscured.  That  would  be  but  natural,  —  nay, 
inevitable. 

But,  however  prepared  for  that  result,  the  conse- 
quences of  the  great  moral  upheaval  were  some- 
what disappointing,  nevertheless.  Some  observers, 
arrived  at  years  of  reflection  and  forecast  at  the 
time,  anticipated  from  the  impulse  and  inspiration 
of  the  generous  and  heroic  sentiments  of  the  hour, 
and  especially  from  the  moral  elements  of  sacrifice 
and  beneficence  associated  with  them,  an  altogether 
permanent  and  decided  uplift  of  the  religious  life  of 
the  people  to  a  higher  level,  —  a  distinct  spiritual- 
izing and  purifying  of  the  conditions  of  society, 
which  would  make  the  power  of  piety  in  individual 
hearts  more  controlling,  and  the  progress  of  all 
true  interests  of  the  Church  of  Christ  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God  more  rapid  and  certain. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  while  some  of  these 
anticipations  have  in  part  been  realized,  not  all  of 
them  have  been.  Hardly  more  necessary  is  it  to 
say  why  they  have  not  been. 


SPIRITUAL   RESULTS   OF   THE    WAR.      167 

War,  anyway,  and  for  an  object  however  high  or 
important,  is  attended  and  followed  by  its  inevi- 
table demoralizations.  Not  a  war  of  human  history 
but  has  been  so  accompanied  or  succeeded.  From 
the  day  when  the  Master  in  the  Garden  said  to  his 
impetuous  disciple,  Peter,  eager  to  serve  his  cause, 
—  "  Put  up  thy  sword  again  into  his  place ;  for  all 
they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  with  the 
sword, "  —  to  this  day,  war  has  been  a  poor  pro- 
moter of  religion.  Although  it  may  possibly  be 
true,  as  Hosea  Biglow  has  it,  that  — 

"...  civlyzation  doos  git  forrid 
Sometimes  upon  a  powder-cart,"  — 

the  Gospel  of  Christ  does  not  advance  much  in  that 
way. 

But,  laying  aside  the  question  of  the  general 
influence  of  war  upon  the  moral  and  spiritual  life 
of  a  people,  and  the  influence  of  our  war  upon  our 
people  in  particular,  there  were  certain  accompani- 
ments and  sequences  of  the  conflict  which  especially 
tended  to  frustrate  that  high  expectation  which 
some  entertained  of  a  visible,  certain,  and  perma- 
nent moral  and  spiritual  uplift  of  the  public  life  to 
higher  levels. 

One  such  frustrative  influence  was  the  introduc- 
tion at  that  era  into  the  general  spirit  of  the  people 
of  an  eagerness  for  sudden  and  splendid  success  — 
in  accumulation  of  property,  in  achievement  of 
social  or  political  distinction  —  such  as  had  never 
in  any  even  approximate  degree  characterized  our 


168  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

communities  before.  Amid  all  the  sufferings  and 
self-denials  of  the  many,  the  few  grew  rich  or 
famous  or  variously  successful  with  a  celerity  and 
an  apparent  ease  that  has  been  like  an  intoxicant 
to  society  ever  since.  A  hunger  and  restlessness 
for  rapid  achievement  and  prosperity  entered  then 
into  the  people's  blood,  whose  fever  still  shows  no 
signs  of  dying  out;  and  whose  manifested  tokens 
are  one  of  the  most  ominous  signs  of  our  times 
to-day. 

When,  to  the  simplicity  of  Puritan  beginnings, 
and  to  the  sober  frugality  of  even  the  middle 
period  of  our  national  history,  there  has  succeeded 
in  wide  circles  of  society  a  prodigality  and  a  lux- 
ury which  Rome  scarcely  in  her  splendors  could 
surpass,  the  problem  becomes  a  grave  one  alike  for 
morals  and  for  religion :  —  what  is,  and  is  to  be, 
the  issue  of  these  things  ?  This  is  mainly  a  post- 
helium  phenomenon.  The  great  fortunes  of  the  day 
—  the  wonder  of  the  world  and  the  provocation  of 
envy  and  anarchy  —  are,  with  few  exceptions,  the 
product  of  the  brief  years  which  lie  between  us  and 
the  surrender  at  Appomattox ;  but  they  stand 
more  closely  related  to  the  ambitions  and  acquisi- 
tions begotten  in  the  period  of  the  rebellion  than 
is  always  remembered. 

Nor  has  it  been  without  a  very  considerable 
abatement  of  the  expectation  of  a  high  moral  eleva- 
tion of  sentiment  which  should  forever  after  char- 
acterize our  social  and  public  life,  that  we  find  the 
Nation  called  upon,  ten,  twenty,  and  thirty  years 


SPIRITUAL  RESULTS   OF  THE    WAR.      169 

after  the  war,  to  support  a  pension-list  —  now  cost- 
ing more  than  the  standing  army  of  any  nation  of 
Europe,  — for  services  which  were  supposed  to  be 
the  spontaneous  and  irrepressible  offering  of  patri- 
otic and  humanitarian  sentiment;  and  that  we  see 
both  the  great  political  parties  of  the  country  using 
this  pension  list  as  the  reckless  means  of  outbid- 
ding one  another  in  popular  favor. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  cheerfully  to  be  recog- 
nized that  the  war  gave  an  impulse,  immense  and 
lasting,  to  arts,  inventions,  industries,  mechan- 
isms, commercial  and  manufacturing  enterprises, 
certainly  not  evil  in  themselves,  and  many  of  them 
distinctly  tributary  to  social  and  public  welfare. 
If  any,  or  even  many,  of  them  have  indirectly 
worked  to  the  disadvantage  of  moral  and  religious 
interests,  it  is  only  because  anything  in  this  world 
of  ours  may  be  made  inimical  to  those  interests  by 
too  engrossing  attention,  turning  away  men's  minds 
and  hearts  from  other  less  visible  realities. 

But,  however  it  may  be  viewed,  the  great  cyclonic 
event  which  marked  the  beginning  of  the  epoch 
whose  religious  traits  are  occupying  present  atten- 
tion, constitutes  a  reckoning  point  and  a  divisional 
boundary  in  American  history.  Things  on  one  or 
the  other  side  of  that  separating  mountain-barrier 
are  manifoldly  diverse.  In  politics,  in  business,  in 
society,  and,  as  there  will  be  occasion  also  to  see, 
in  religion  as  well,  things  are  in  many  respects  in 
a  different  era.  It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  lecture 
to  say  whether,   or  in  what  respects,   the  era   is 


170  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

better  or  worse  than  any  before,  but  only  to  report 
as  clearly  as  possible  some  of  its  distinguishing 
characteristics. 

One  feature  of  curi-ent  religious  life  in  New 
England,  so  obvious  and  familiar  as  to  call  for 
no  extended  remark,  —  only  for  passing  mention, 
indeed,  — is  the  immense  development  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  voluntary  organization  for  moral  and 
religious  objects  characteristic  of  the  present  time. 
There  was  occasion  to  notice  in  a  previous  lecture 
the  somewhat  sudden  emergence,  near  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  and  under  the  impulse  of 
the  evangelistic  spirit  then  prevailing  in  the 
churches,  of  quite  a  number  of  such  voluntary 
organizations  for  missionary  and  educational  pur- 
poses in  several  ecclesiastical  denominations.  Yet 
the  development  of  the  principle  then  illustrated 
was  but  infantile  when  compared  with  that  which 
has  marked  the  history  of  the  past  thirty-five 
years.  Into  the  statistics  of  this  matter  it  is 
impossible  here  even  to  begin  to  look;  but  it  is 
only  needful  to  bring  to  mind  the  names  of  such 
organizations  as  the  Young  Men's  and  Young 
Women's  Christian  Associations,  the  Christian 
Endeavor  Society,  the  Brotherhood  of  Philip  and 
Andrew,  the  Epworth  League,  the  Salvation  Army, 
the  King's  Daughters,  and  many  others  for  religious 
purposes;  the  Red  Cross  Society,  the  Shelters, 
Bands  of  Mercy,  and  Social  Settlements,  the 
Woman's  Christian  Temperance  Union,  and  the 
various  industrial  relief  societies  for  humanitarian 


ORGANIZATION.  171 

and  philanthropic  ends;  the  Chautauqua  Circles, 
Summer  Schools,  and  University  Extension  classes 
for  instructional  purposes,  —  to  have  presented  to  us 
an  amount  and  a  variety  of  organization  for  educa- 
tional, moral,  and  religious  aims  of  which  nothing 
in  past  history  affords  anything  more  than  a  sug- 
gestion. A  very  few  of  these  corporate  and  wide- 
extended  forms  of  benevolent  or  religious  endeavor 
had  their  origin  or  introduction  on  the  other  side 
of  that  boundary  line  which  has  been  spoken  of  as 
dividing  the  current  period  of  New  England's 
religious  life  from  the  past;  but  most  of  them  were 
born  this  side  of  that  boundary,  and  all  of  them 
have  had  their  chief  illustration  distinctly  this 
side  of  it,  and  within  the  lives  of  those  who  are 
still  young  men  and  women. 

Ramifications  of  nearly  all  of  these  organizations 
reach  to  almost  every  farmhouse  threshold  and 
factory  door;  and  these,  supplemented  by  multi- 
tudinous lesser  local  associations  for  kindred  pur- 
poses, and  aided  by  the  ever-increasing  volume  of 
the  publications  of  the  religious  and  philanthropic 
press,  afford  at  once  an  indication  of  and  a  channel 
for  a  form  of  benevolent  or  of  religious  activity 
wholly  characteristic  of  very  recent  days  in  amount 
and  facility  for  expression. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
another  prevailing  feature  of  current  religious  life, 
when  compared  with  the  past,  is  what,  without  any 
invidiousness  in  the  designation,  may  be  called  its 
outwardness  of  character.     Almost  everything  about 


172  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

the  religious  life  of  the  present  hour  tends  to  the 
external  rather  than  to  the  internal.  The  means 
ready  to  every  Christian's  hand  for  active  employ- 
ment, and  the  manifold  objects  of  effort,  more  or 
less  distinctively  religious,  clamorously  soliciting 
their  use,  call  almost  every  willing  worker  forth 
from  himself,  and  the  consideration  of  his  personal 
interests,  into  the  alacrities  of  speech  or  deed  for 
other  men.  What  the  grandparents  of  the  genera- 
tion now  on  the  stage  of  action  used  to  consider  a 
main  duty  of  the  spiritual  life  —  the  duty  of  self- 
examination  —  has  little,  or  indeed  almost  no, 
place  in  modern  experience.  The  habit,  once  so 
general,  of  solemn,  privately  recorded  covenants  on 
conscious  entrance  into  the  religious  life,  and  of 
frequently  subsequent  review  of  fidelity  to  such 
self-imposed  engagements,  may  be  said  to  have 
gone  by  altogether.  If  it  now  exists  at  all,  it  is, 
and  is  regarded  as  being,  the  idiosyncrasy  of  special 
conscientiousness  almost  bordering  on  morbidness, 
rather  than  as  the  natural  expression  of  healthy 
religious  feeling. 

The  quietudes  of  old-time  meditation  and  the 
scrutiny  of  aims  and  motives  are  departed.  They 
relate  to  a  lost  art ;  nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how,  under 
present  conditions  of  life,  the  art  can  be  found  again, 
if  it  were  desirable  to  be  found.  The  watchwords 
of  a  not  very  remote  religious  past  were  "con- 
sider," "be,"  "become;"  those  of  the  present  are 
"  resolve, "  "  speak, "  "  do. "  We  have  not,  probably, 
the  results  sufficiently  in  hand  fully  to  determine 


OUTWARDNESS.  173 

the  significance  and  the  remoter  consequences  of 
this  change,  but  it  is  plain  that  it  involves  a  very 
distinct  modification  of  the  general  type  of  the 
religious  life,  when  compared  with  that  which  ex- 
isted on  the  other  side  of  our  boundary  of  thirty- 
five  or  forty  years  ago. 

Closely  connected  with  what  has  just  been  spoken 
of,  but  itself  constituting  a  distinct  feature  of  cur- 
rent religious  life,  is  the  changed  conception  of  the 
experiences  properly  qualificative  for  membership 
in  the  Christian  Church.     It  is  needless  to  brino- 

o 

again  to  mind  the  very  definite  and  profound  char- 
acter of  those  intellectual  and  emotional  exercises 
of  the  spirit,  once  so  general,  and  once  regarded  as 
so  indispensable.  It  was  remarked,  in  the  last 
lecture,  that  even  so  far  back  as  the  revival  period 
of  1857-1859,  grave  questionings  were  entertained 
by  many  observers  of  previous  religious  awakenings 
as  to  the  genuineness  and  lastingness  of  that  one, 
owing  to  the  contrast  it  afforded  in  the  compara- 
tively slight  intensity  of  the  experiences  of  its  sub- 
jects, when  measured  by  what  had  been  customary 
in  earlier  New  England  history.  This  lessened 
intensity  was  noticeable  in  various  particulars,  but 
was  especially  observable  respecting  the  matter  of 
consciousness  of  sin.  Here  it  was  very  plain  that 
a  marked  difference  existed.  The  sense  of  sin,  so 
vivid  a  feature  of  experience  in  all  revival  periods 
hitherto,  was  singularly  vague  and  unemphatic. 

But  if  this  was  true  in  that  last  of  the  large,  per- 
vasive religious  awakenings  of  American  history, 


174  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

much  more  so  has  it  been  in  the  years  which 
have  succeeded.  As  a  general  fact  of  current 
religious  experience  for  the  generation  now  on  the 
stage,  the  Christian  profession  and  entrance  into 
the  membership  of  the  Church  have  been  attended 
by  no  considerable  struggles  of  spirit ;  by  no  very 
humiliating  feelings  of  guilt  and  desert  of  condem- 
nation ;  by  no  profound  and  over-mastering  realiza- 
tion that  salvation,  if  received,  is  a  matter  of 
unmerited  grace  alone ;  nor  even  by  any  very  con- 
siderable changes  in  conscious  tastes  or  purposes 
in  life.  The  observation  is  too  widespread  and  too 
uniform  to  permit  of  doubt  on  this  matter,  that,  to 
whatsoever  cause  it  may  be  ascribed,  an  alteration 
not  only  of  a  very  distinct,  but  of  a  very  deep, 
nature  has  characterized  the  recent  type  of  religious 
experience  in  these  matters.  Children  and  youth 
presenting  themselves  for  what  —  by  way  of  defer- 
ence to  historic  usage  apparently  —  is  still  called 
"  examination "  for  church-membership,  students 
of  theology  offering  themselves  for  licensure  to 
preach  the  Gospel,  and  candidates  for  ordination 
before  church  councils,  all  illustrate,  and  illustrate 
almost  equally,  the  change  spoken  of.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that,  though  the  Congregational 
churches  of  New  England  and  of  the  country  at 
large  have  rejected  the  Half-way-Covenant  theory, 
they  are  to-day  generally  admitting  to  full  com- 
munion a  membership  which  exhibits  less  clearly 
understood  and  realized  convictions  of  sin  and  of 
the  necessity  of  atoning  grace  as  the  only  hope  of 


CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP.  175 

lost  men  than  under  that  system  were  often  expected 
of  those  who  came  only  halfway  within  the  covenant 
doors.  A  distinct  practical  approximation  is  thus 
indicated  to  that  Episcopal  theory  of  the  Church  as 
a  mixed  body,  among  whose  various  elements  it  is 
impossible  to  discriminate  in  this  world,  —  a  theory 
which  it  was  the  primary  object  of  original  Congre- 
gationalism to  repudiate  and  escape  from.  For  it 
cannot  be  gravely  pretended  that  the  conditions  now 
generally  pre-requisite  to  church-membership  are 
such  as  meet  that  demand  of  "  visible  saintship  "  on 
which  ancient  Congregationalism  would  alone  build 
its  churchly  edifice.  The  modern  practice  may  be 
an  improvement  on  the  old  theory,  but  it  is  scarcely 
possible  not  to  recognize  the  change.  Congrega- 
tionalism to-day,  in  reference  to  this  matter,  is 
being  worked  on  Episcopalian  principles ;  and  it  is 
being  so  worked  with  decidedly  less  adequate  safe- 
guards against  mistake  and  lack  of  preparation  for 
intelligent  action  than  are  generally  found  in  the 
confirmation  classes  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

With  the  diminished  emphasis  upon  an  experi- 
ence of  sin-consciousness  as  either  a  pre-requisite 
or  sequent  of  church-relationship,  it  is  not  strange 
that  another  feature  of  the  religious  life  of  our 
time  should  be  a  considerably  abated  sense  of  the 
danger  of  men  apart  from  personal  experience  of 
the  Gospel's  converting  power. 

Here  again  an  alteration,  not  easy,  indeed,  to 
formulate  or  exactly  to  measure,  brings  the  present 
into  contrast  with  the  past.     Whether  the  reality 


176  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

of  this  change  be  tested  by  the  utterances  from 
the  pulpit  concerning  the  peril  of  unconverted 
hearers  in  the  congregation,  or  by  the  more  general 
arguments  and  appeals  for  sending  the  Gospel  to 
those  ignorant  of  it,  the  conclusion  is  the  same. 
No  such  conviction  as  once  prevailed,  of  the  utter 
danger  attending  the  condition  of  men  apart  from 
the  Gospel,  now  dominates  the  exhortations  of  the 
pulpit  or  the  appeals  of  the  Missionary  Boards. 
A  glance  through  the  sermons  preached  before  our 
great  Foreign  Missionary  societies,  or  even  a  recol- 
lection of  addresses  delivered  in  the  hearing  of 
such  as  have  attended  the  anniversaries  of  these 
bodies  for  any  considerable  number  of  years,  is 
conclusive  on  this  point.  No  argument  is  here 
undertaken  for  or  against  the  propriety  or  impro- 
priety of  this  change,  or  the  truth  or  falsity  of  any 
possible  new  conceptions  of  the  real  condition  and 
prospects  of  men  apart  from  a  present  experience 
of  the  Gospel's  saving  power.  Still  less  is  it 
attempted  to  set  forth  on  what  other  possible  points 
of  religious  truth  the  emphasis,  lightened  on  that 
just  spoken  of,  may  now  more  strongly  be  placed, 
and,  as  some  may  say,  may  now  rest  with  more 
than  full  compensation.  It  is  only  pointed  out 
that,  —  however  it  may  be  justified  or  deplored  — 
a  change  has  taken  place  of  such  magnitude  and 
extent  as  cannot  possibly  be  overlooked.  It  is  a 
change  so  great  as  to  leave  no  room  for  wonder 
that  our  Universalist  fellow-Christians  frequently 
remark   upon   it,  as  implying  a  distinct  approach 


DIMINISHED  SENSE   OF  DANGER.        177 

on  the  part  of  Congregationalism  generally  to  their 
principle  of  an  expected  salvation  for  all.  Whether 
this  implication  is  valid,  or  not,  respecting  Con- 
gregationalism as  a  whole,  it  is  one  which  certainly 
has  not  only  its  apparent  justification  in  the  dimin- 
ished sense  of  sin-danger  which  seems  to  character- 
ize our  pulpits  generally,  but  its  more  explicit  and 
positive  confirmation,  indeed,  in  the  cases  of  some 
eminent  leaders  in  our  Congregational  churches, 
whose  Universalism  is  as  pronounced  as  that  of 
Murray  himself,  and  whose  standing  as  Congrega- 
tional ministers  is  not  at  all  thereby  impaired. 

Both  the  characteristic  features  of  current  reli- 
gious conviction  or  sentiment  to  which  reference 
has  just  been  made  are  suited  to  awaken  remem- 
brance of  another  trait  of  the  religious  life  of  our 
time,  to  which  they  probably  stand  closely  related, 
and  out  of  which  some  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  they  have  largely  sprung.  This  is  the  very 
small  amount  of  attention  given  in  our  time  to  sys- 
tematic religious  doctrine.  The  New  England  mind 
through  a  very  large  portion  of  our  history  has  been 
strongly  interested  in  theology.  From  the  days  in 
which  the  Massachusetts  General  Court  set  John 
Norton  to  answer  William  Pynchon's  treatise  on  a 
view  of  the  atonement  which  was  substantially  what 
is  now,  or  has  been  till  very  lately,  the  generally 
accepted  New  England  view,  down  through  Willard 
and  Edwards,  and  the  great  Old-Calvinist  and 
Hopkinsian  divines,  to  Bushnell  and  Park  in  a 
comparatively  recent  day,   the  study  of   religious 

12 


178  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

doctrine  has  been  a  matter  of  characteristic  employ- 
ment. Times  have  been  —  these  indeed  were  of 
long  continuance  —  when  nothing  would  so  stir  the 
blood  of  a  New  England  congregation  as  a  thorough- 
going discussion  of  some  controverted  point  in  dog- 
matic divinity.  Amid  the  alarms  of  Indian  wars, 
or  the  tumults  of  Revolutionary  struggles,  place  and 
interest  and  absorbing  attention  could  be  found  for 
the  sharp  distinctions  of  doctrinal  analysis  and  the 
systematic  statement  of  correlated  truth. 

It  is  needless  to  say  how  different  it  has  been  in 
the  period  now  under  immediate  consideration.  To 
call  a  sermon  a  "  doctrinal  sermon  "  is  the  shortest 
way  in  the  popular  apprehension  to  describe  it  as 
uninteresting  and  even  unimportant.  To  suggest 
that  a  minister  is  inclined  to  doctrinal  preaching 
is  the  surest  method  to  prevent  the  consideration 
of  his  name  by  any  parish  committee  in  search  of  a 
pastor.  And  this  popular  distaste  for  systematic 
divinity  is  well  indicated,  also,  in  the  subordinate 
place  to  which  the  subject  is  reduced  in  the  cur- 
ricula of  theological  seminaries  designed  for  the 
express  training  of  theologians.  Once  the  central 
topic,  to  which  all  others  were  regarded  as  prepar- 
atory or  supplemental,  —  systematic  divinity  has 
now  to  fight  for  its  narrowed  room,  and  to  contend, 
sometimes  with  very  partial  success,  for  an  equal 
standing  place  with  many  other  subjects. 

Yet  it  would  not  be  right,  in  saying  this,  to 
convey  the  impression  that  preaching  has  probably 
either  intellectually  or  spiritually  degenerated.     It 


CHANGES  IN  PREACHING.  179 

has  changed.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that,  for 
the  uses  to  which  it  has  addressed  itself  and  the 
altered  requirements  of  altered  conditions  of  reli- 
gious life,  it  has  deteriorated.  It  has  become  largely 
ethical  where  it  was  formerly  dogmatic ;  practical, 
directive  toward  the  prosecution  of  benevolent  or 
Christian  enterprise;  expository  of  the  require- 
ments of  personal,  social,  and  public  obligations; 
even,  it  may  be  believed,  illuminative  in  many 
points  of  truer  and  higher  conceptions  of  the  divine 
character  and  of  the  mind  of  Christ  toward  men 
than  formerly  prevailed.  How  far  it  can  travel 
the  present  road,  especially  in  the  treatment  of 
political  and  so-called  sociological  applications  of 
the  Gospel,  without  suffering  some  loss  of  effect- 
iveness in  what  now,  as  always,  should  be  the 
main  purpose  of  preaching  —  whatever  the  imme- 
diate subject-matter  dealt  with  —  may  be  an  im- 
portant question.  But  certainly  in  average  skillful- 
ness  of  method,  and  in  intellectual  ability  and 
resource,  the  altered  character  of  preaching  has 
not  been  indicative  of  enfeeblement  of  mind  or 
heart.  They  were  not  all  Hookers,  or  Edwardses, 
or  Bellamys,  or  Dwights,  or  Griffins,  or  Lyman 
Beechers  who  stood  in  the  pulpit  before  our  day. 
The  query  just  now  suggested,  however,  as  pos- 
sibly arising,  in  view  of  the  growing  prominence  of 
certain  classes  of  subjects  in  pulpit  discourse, 
which  were  formerly  quite  unknown  there,  leads 
to  the  more  definite  mention  of  a  feature  of  the 
religious  life  of  our  time,   of   perhaps  larger  sig- 


180  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

nilicance  than  any  yet  noticed  in  this  lecture; 
namely,  the  changed  conception  which,  in  the  past 
few  years,  has  come  into  recognizable  and  appar- 
ently increasing  acceptance,  respecting  the  rela- 
tionship of  Christianity  to  society  at  large,  or  of 
the  Church  to  the  World. 

Unquestionably  the  general  conception  enter- 
tained among  our  New  England  progenitors  in  the 
religious  life  was  that  of  Christianity  as  an  agency 
for  individual  rescue  and  salvation;  and  of  the 
Church  as  the  divinely  appointed  place  of  ingather- 
ing for  souls  brought  home  from  a  lost  and  ruined 
world.  But  just  as  plainly  has  there  more  recently 
risen  in  many  minds  the  conception  of  Christianity 
as  the  savior  of  society,  and  of  the  Church  as  one 
instrumentality  among  others  in  an  enterprise  for 
the  general  redemption  of  humanity.  The  thought 
ranges  over  a  wide  scale  of  development  in  different 
entertainers  of  the  comparatively  new  conception. 

There  are  those  who,  while  believing  that  the 
Gospel's  hope  lies  in  the  regeneration  of  individual 
souls,  recognize,  nevertheless,  the  mighty  influ- 
ence of  circumstances  and  environment  in  making 
this  individual  redemption  more  or  less  probable. 
They  therefore  look  with  interest  and  sympathy 
on  all  social  endeavors  to  make  as  favorable  as 
possible  those  outward  conditions  of  life,  which,  if 
they  do  not  assure  the  successful  approach  of 
religious  motives  to  men,  at  least,  it  may  be  hoped, 
make  that  approach  less  difficult.  To  this  end, 
they  rejoice  in  whatever  improves  the  physical  and 


CONCEPTIONS   OF  THE   CHURCH.        181 

social  conditions  of  a  community.  They  look  upon 
its  schools  and  libraries  and  health  boards  as 
having  a  truly  religious  value;  and  especially  are 
they  interested  in  making  the  Church  a  kind  of 
model  of  the  regenerated  society  they  anticipate, 
—  a  reformatory  for  the  erring,  a  home  for  the 
homeless,  a  place  of  recreation  for  the  tired,  a 
restaurant  for  the  hungry,  as  well  as  a  worshiping 
place  for  the  devout,  — becoming  thus  an  "institu- 
tion "  which  is  an  epitome  of  a  Christianized 
world. 

Others,  who  have  traveled  farther  in  this  direc- 
tion, seem  to  fasten  about  all  hope  for  the  Gospel's 
greater  progress,  on  a  preliminary  better  adjust- 
ment of  society;  on  better  relationships  between 
capital  and  labor;  on  a  more  equal  division  of 
property ;  on  improved  habits  of  living  and  increased 
facilities  for  education,  holidays,  and  enjoyment. 
Some  who  are  still  called  ministers  of  the  Gospel, 
and  who  undoubtedly  look  upon  themselves  as  the 
preachers  of  a  more  Gospel-like  evangel  than  any 
hitherto  proclaimed,  unfold  a  system  scarcely  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  Socialism  of  any  French  or 
German  doctrinaire.  They  denounce  the  Church,  as 
it  has  been  conceived  of  and  administered  hitherto, 
in  its  strenuous  and  dominating  endeavor  for  the 
salvation  of  individual  men  out  of  a  world  lying  in 
wickedness,  as  a  positive  hindrance  to  Christianity 
and  a  misrepresenter  of  the  Gospel. 

There  is,  as  has  been  said,  a  considerable  range 
of  diversity  in  these  positions.     But  the  conception 


182  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

of  a  relationship  of  the  Gospel  to  society,  hitherto 
insufficiently  recognized,  has  unquestionably  gotten 
a  hold  on  men's  minds,  and  to  some  extent  has 
affected  and  modified  the  character  of  preaching 
in  almost  all  pulpits.  Whether  it  has  so  far 
affected  it  in  any  localities  as  to  justify  the  re- 
mark of  a  very  distinguished  theological  professor 
in  one  of  the  oldest  Congregational  seminaries,  — 
that,  judging  from  the  sermons  preached  in  his 
region,  it  appears  that  "the  main  business  Christ 
came  upon  into  this  world  for  was  to  teach  improved 
cooking  and  a  better  system  of  drainage,"  —  is  not 
here  affirmed.  But  that  the  general  conception 
to  which  the  brilliant  professor  thus  refers  has  its 
effect  in  altering  the  stress  of  the  emphasis  once 
put  upon  the  individual  bearings  of  Christianity; 
and,  to  some  extent,  in  diminishing  the  intensity 
of  the  personal  appeal,  there  can,  I  think,  be  no 
question.  The  single  soul  does  not  seem  to  weigh 
so  much  as  it  once  did,  when  in  former  days  it  was 
so  often  set  in  significance  over  against  a  material 
world.  The  Church  does  not  stand  quite  for  what 
it  did,  when  preachers  of  former  days  pointed  to  it 
as  the  Ark  of  safety  from  a  Deluge  close  at  hand. 
In  this  present  time  it  is  thought  of  by  many  rather 
as  one  of  the  various  ships  wherein  men  may  be 
safely  borne  over  the  troubled  waters  of  this  earthly 
life.  Membership  in  the  communion  of  those  who 
have  been  baptized  into  the  name  of  the  Sovereign, 
the  Savior  and  the  Sanctifier  of  men,  does  not 
amount  to  quite  what   it  did  formerly,  now  that 


VALUE   OF  A    SOUL.  183 

the  statement  is  so  frequently  made  by  pastors  of 
Christian  churches,  that  there  are  about  as  many 
true  disciples  outside  as  inside  such  fellowships; 
and  that  the  command  to  acknowledge  Christ  before 
men  has  no  very  essential  relation  to  a  connection 
with  the  visible  Church  he  has  established. 

Changes  of  mental  attitude  like  these,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  pervasive  of  New  England  religious 
thought,  cannot  be  denied.  It  is  not  the  design  of 
these  lectures  to  justify  or  oppose  them,  but  only 
to  call  attention  to  them.  As  to  how  far  they  are 
an  improvement  in  the  religious  life  of  the  period, 
men  will  differ  in  opinion.  But,  as  we  have  pre- 
viously had  occasion  to  note  the  fact  that  Universal- 
ist  Christians  seem  to  find  a  general  approximation 
of  all  denominations  to  their  characteristic  view 
regarding  another  point  of  religious  feeling  of  the 
time,  so  now  it  may  not  surprise  us  to  learn,  that 
Unitarian  believers  claim  to  discover  in  the  ten- 
dency more  immediately  under  consideration  a  sig- 
nificant approach  to  their  thought  of  a  redemption 
of  man  by  education,  moral  improvement,  better- 
ment of  situation  and  character,  rather  than  by 
divine  intervention  through  regenerating  grace. 
An  interesting  confirmation  of  this  claim  of  the 
approximation  of  Orthodox  to  Unitarian  positions 
is  the  recent  resumption  of  pulpit  exchanges  be- 
tween two  representative  pastors  of  those  long-time 
discriminated  denominations  in  Boston.  One  of 
these  pastors  is  reported  in  the  public  journals 
as   saying  that    the    event    "means   that   the   old 


184  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

quarrel  of  eighty  years'  standing  is  ended;  and 
its  causes  were  so  long  ago  that  only  antiquarians 
remember  them."  If  it  be  true  that  the  great 
debate,  from  1800  to  1820,  concerning  the  person 
of  Christ  and  the  nature  of  his  saving  work  for 
men,  is  a  forgotten  issue  and  an  ended  difference, 
it  marks,  indeed,  an  important  epoch  in  New  Eng- 
land religious  history. 

Another  characteristic  of  the  present  period  of 
religious  affairs  in  New  England,  having  a  great, 
but  as  yet  not  altogether  definable  or  determined 
effect  on  the  religious  life,  is  the  changed  attitude 
of  the  scholarly,  and,  to  some  extent,  of  the  gen- 
eral, mind,  respecting  the  nature  and  authority  of 
Scripture.  It  is  impossible  not  to  recognize  the 
fact  of  a  wide-spread  modification  of  that  character- 
istic Reformation  view  of  the  Bible  which  regarded 
it  as  the  direct  and  authoritative  utterance,  in  all 
parts,  of  the  divine  mind  and  will.  There  was 
occasion  in  the  first  of  these  lectures  to  comment 
on  the  completeness  of  the  acceptance  of  this  view 
of  Holy  Writ  by  the  founders  of  the  New  England 
churches,  and  the  illustrations  they  gave  of  their 
convictions  in  legal  enactments  as  well  as  in 
doctrinal  discussions  and  homiletic  exhortations. 
Undoubtedly  a  gradual  and  almost  insensible  modi- 
fication of  the  full  sweep  of  their  practical  claim 
that  the  Bible  is  everywhere,  and  in  all  points, 
equally  inspired  by  the  direct  voice  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  has  long  been  in  process.  But  it  has  been 
distinctly  within  the  period  which  we  are  now  con- 


VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  185 

sidering  that  the  popular  mind  has  awakened  to 
questionings  and  doubts  on  this  matter;  as,  also,  it 
has  been  only  within  this  period  that  these  prob- 
lems have  been  discussed  in  a  really  popular 
manner  in  pulpits,  in  familiar  treatises,  in  news- 
papers, and  in  all  common  avenues  of  approach  to 
the  general  thought  of  men.  But,  however  recent 
the  rise  of  such  familiar  discussions,  there  can  be 
no  question  that  they  have  already  availed  to  put 
the  Bible  in  a  very  different  place  from  that  which 
it  has  occupied  historically  in  all  the  past  of  these 
New  England  generations.  Instead  of  being  the 
volume  of  ultimate  and  unquestioning  appeal,  at 
least  on  every  moral  and  religious  problem,  the  Bible 
is  now,  in  the  view  of  many  devout  and  religious 
men  among  us  —  professors  in  our  theological  semi- 
naries and  occupants  of  our  pulpits  —  a  volume  to  be 
read  with  a  critically  discriminating  eye,  educated 
to  discern  what  is  and  what  is  not  authoritative  and 
inspired  in  it.  Its  historic  statements  are  to  be 
tested  as  to  their  accuracy  by  evidences  outside  the 
pages  of  the  Book  itself  before  they  can  be  fully 
depended  on;  and  even  the  spiritual  principles  it 
seems  to  enunciate  must  be  tried  by  their  corre- 
spondence with  what  is  true  and  right  in  experi- 
ence, personal  or  collective,  antecedent  to  their 
complete  acceptance  as  universally  established 
truth. 

The  compilation  of  Scripture  through  the  hands 
of  successive  editorships  of  well-intentioned  but 
fallible   writers,  —  writers    sometimes    dominated 


186  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

by  a  dogmatic  or  ecclesiastical  purpose  stronger 
than  a  strictly  historical  or  ethical  one,  —  has  in- 
troduced, it  is  affirmed,  an  element  of  uncertainty 
into  the  accuracy  of'  a  great  part  of  Old  Testament 
narrative,  and  into  not  a  little  of  the  New;  and 
this  even  respecting  alleged  facts  concerning  the 
birth,  the  sayings,  the  miracles,  the  resurrection 
of  our  Lord.  We  are  told,  indeed,  that  the  crite- 
rion of  the  critical  consciousness,  as  well  as  the 
historic  test,  needs  to  be  carefully  employed  re- 
specting all  of  Scripture,  in  order  to  gain  its  true 
meaning,  and  to  derive  from  this  sifting  its  proper 
benefit.  So  much  is  this  the  case  that  a  volume, 
recently  written  by  the  honored  pastor  of  one  of 
the  oldest  of  Boston  churches,  and  commended  for 
its  orthodoxy  by  the  oldest  Congregational  religious 
newspaper,  plainly  sets  forth  the  doctrine  that  it  is 
Christ  who  is  the  verification  of  Scripture,  and  not 
Scripture  which  must  be  looked  to  as  the  verifier 
of  Christ.  This  is  a  doctrine  which,  apparently, 
brings  its  reader  again,  more  than  two  centuries 
and  a  half  later,  to  that  nearly  equivalent  state- 
ment which,  in  the  teaching  of  Mrs.  Anne  Hutch- 
inson, amazed  the  divines  of  that  same  city,  and 
which  there  was  occasion  to  notice  in  the  first  lec- 
ture, —  ''  The  due  search  and  knowledge  of  the  holy 
Scripture  is  not  a  safe  and  sure  way  of  searching 
and  finding  Christ." 

Find  Christ  first,  and  then  test  Scripture  by 
Him,  is  the  increasingly  advocated  modern  view. 
But  how  to  find  Christ  in  the  use  of  a  Scripture 


VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  187 

which  is  not  in  itself  authoritative,  or  which  is 
authoritative  only  when  adjudged  to  be  so  by  some 
other  test  than  its  being  Scripture,  is  a  problem  not 
so  clear  as  one  might  wish  it  to  be.  The  problem 
is  stated  nakedly  and  without  any  attempt  to  fore- 
cast its  solution. 

It  is  plain  however,  that  the  altered  position 
which  Scripture  is  to  occupy  under  the  changed 
conception  which  now  seems  to  be  on  the  incoming 
tide  of  acceptance,  is  already  profoundly  influen- 
cing, and  is  destined  still  more  profoundly  to  influ- 
ence, the  religious  life. 

Many  contend  that  the  influence  has  already  proved 
beneficial,  and  will  become  more  and  more  so  as 
the  new  method  of  looking  at  the  Bible  increasingly 
prevails,  —  that  is,  of  looking  at  it  as  a  literature ; 
as  a  book  containing,  among  a  considerable  mass 
of  unimportant  and  inferior  and  even  objectionable 
materials,  some  of  the  highest  utterances  of  morals 
and  religion  ever  made;  as  a  volume  which,  when 
duly  sifted  from  legend  and  editorial  error,  gives  us 
a  narrative  of  the  most  important  events  of  human 
history  in  relation  to  God,  and,  above  all,  which 
tells  us  —  attended,  indeed,  by  some  errors  and 
exaggerations  —  of  the  life  of  the  Divine  Man,  the 
most  transcendent  Personality  who  ever  appeared 
among  the  children  of  men.  Many  whom  we  honor 
and  admire  aver  that,  as  a  matter  of  personal  expe- 
rience, the  Bible  was  never  before  so  interesting, 
instructive,  or  even  so  influential  and  authoritative, 
a  book  to  them  as  when  looked  at  through  these 


188  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

modern  lenses  of  historical  and  philological  and 
spiritual  criticism.  It  is  difficult  to  deny  allega- 
tions like  these.  The  appeal  to  experience  is  one 
which  always  deserves  a  certain  measure  of  respect. 
It  is  an  interesting  question,  however,  among 
many  which  might  be  suggested,  how  far  the  new 
conception  of  the  Bible  w\\\  contribute  to  that 
source  of  Christian  growth,  which  was  once  thought 
profitable  and  enjoyable  in  the  experience  of  many 
former  generations,  and  which  was  found  in  the 
reverent  contemplation  of  extended  portions  of 
Scripture,  and  in  their  careful  memorizing  by  the 
young.  How  many  aged  disciples  have  almost 
lived  in  Scripture  story!  What  rich  supplies  of 
literally  transcribed  and  ineffaceable  utterances  of 
what  they  deemed  the  words  of  God  were  engraved 
upon  the  tablets  of  recollection  forever!  What 
comfort  they  derived  from  these  supplies  in  hours 
of  physical  labor,  in  times  of  bodily  illness,  in  the 
watches  of  the  sleepless  night,  and  in  the  drawings- 
nigh  of  enfeeblement  and  of  death!  Will  it  be 
very  much  worth  while,  in  the  future,  to  record  on 
those  tablets  what  a  critically  revising  new-editor- 
ship, supplementing  the  imperfect  editorship  of  the 
original  compilers,  may  conclude,  with  more  or 
less  of  harmony,  to  be  of  abiding  value  ?  Or  how 
can  recollection  well  take  hold  of  that  which  the 
coordinate  faculties  of  historic,  philological,  and 
spiritual  analysis  are  constantly  exercised  to  dis- 
criminate and  divide  ? 

This  whole    matter   of    the   changjed   and    still 


VIEWS   OF  SCRIPTURE.  189 

changing  attitude  of  the  time  toward  Scripture  has 
important  problems  yet  unsolved.  That  it  is  exert- 
ing, and  is  still  further  to  exert,  a  powerful  influ- 
ence on  the  religious  life,  there  can  be  no  question. 
Whether  this  influence  will  be  for  good  or  ill  is  a 
question  on  which  prophets  prophesy  variously, 
and  the  event  can  best  decide. 

Another  thing,  which  the  observer  of  the  work- 
ings of  the  religious  life  of  fifty  or  more  years  ago 
would  find  subject  in  our  day  to  a  very  great 
change,  is  the  form  of  endeavor  very  generally  em- 
ployed when  a  distinct  effort  for  religious  quicken- 
ing is  made  in  most  communities.  It  has  been 
already  pointed  out  that,  in  the  earlier  of  the  great 
series  of  revivals  which  marked  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, very  small  use  was  made  of  itinerating  evan- 
gelistic agencies  in  the  promotion  of  the  spiritually 
refreshing  work ;  but  that,  as  successive  periods  of 
religious  awakening  followed  one  another,  the  serv- 
ices, first  of  distinguished  pastors,  and  then  of  a 
class  of  ministers  more  or  less  distinctly  committed 
and  segregated  to  this  kind  of  work,  came  into 
general  employment.  The  degenerating  quality  of 
these  religious  laborers,  and  the  extravagances  which 
attended  many  of  their  methods,  caused  the  system 
itself  to  become  the  subject  of  very  considerable 
controversy,  and  resulted  in  its  comparative  dis- 
credit and  disuse. 

This  system,  under  somewhat  altered  conditions, 
has    more    recently    experienced    a    revivification, 


190  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

and,  it  would  appear,  to  a  considerable  extent,  a 
reinstatement  in  public  approval.  These  altered 
conditions,  however,  of  the  revived  itinerancy  are 
what  give  it  its  chief  interest  to  a  student  of  the 
religious  life  of  to-day,  and  which  invest  the  mat- 
ter, also,  with  some  degree  of  solicitude.  Revival- 
ism has  come  to  be  a  profession,  —  one  might 
almost  say  a  trade.  Bureaus  for  the  furnishing 
of  any  applying  community  with  an  evangelistic 
worker  are  established,  where  lists  of  such  avail- 
able itinerators  can  be  inspected;  where  their 
"  records  "  are  kept ;  where  their  peculiar  adapta- 
tions to  one  or  another  class  of  people  can  be  ascer- 
tained ;  where  the  probable  cost  of  their  enlistment 
for  a  revivalistic  campaign  can  be  estimated ;  and 
where,  in  some  reported  instances  at  least,  the  j^er 
capita  expense  of  souls  saved  has  been  given. 

It  is  certainly  a  somewhat  striking  fact,  and  one  in 
itself  calculated  to  arrest  attention,  if  not  to  awaken 
alarm,  that,  in  a  period  of  time  singularly  destitute 
of  those  general  movings  on  the  spirits  of  men, 
which  have  been  the  occasions  of  the  chief  re- 
vivings  of  religious  life  in  almost  all  our  New 
England  history  hitherto,  an  agency  so  largely 
mechanical  and  bearing  so  many  resemblances  to 
the  methods  of  commercial  enterprise,  should  have 
so  large  acceptance.  There  were,  indeed,  great 
differences  in  the  manifestations  of  revivalistic 
quickening  characteristic  of  the  earlier  half  of  this 
century,  —  and  differences  largely  owing  to  the 
quality  of  evangelistic  agencies  employed.     Yet  to 


EVANGELISTIC  METHODS.  191 

one  old  enough  to  remember  some  of  the  powerful 
scenes  of  spiritual  awakening  of  other  revival  days, 
or  to  those  who  read  in  New  England  annals  the 
story  of  the  revivings  of  years  to  which  living 
memories  do  not  extend,  the  present  system  of 
revivals  to  order,  under  the  conduct  of  bureau- 
supplied  evangelists,  has  its  more  than  doubtful 
side.  Can  it  be  that  the  Christians  of  the  New 
England  churches  need  to  go  down  to  this  sort  of 
Egypt  for  help  ? 

Our  examination  of  the  consequences  of  the 
Evangelical  Reawakening  concluded  —  at  least 
that  portion  of  it  which  referred  to  the  state  of 
religious  feeling  among  communities  considered  as 
Evangelical  and  Orthodox,  in  distinction  from 
those  known  as  "  Liberal  "  —  with  a  few  observa- 
tions on  what  seemed  to  be  the  effect  of  the  revival 
era,  from  1790  to  1859,  on  the  general  feeling  in 
reference  to  certain  social  practices.  The  altered 
position  of  the  churches  was  noted  —  though  it  was 
remarked  that  there  were  exceptions  to  their  uni- 
formity of  attitude  —  in  reference  to  the  convivial 
use  of  wine,  to  the  theater,  to  dancing,  and  the 
playing  of  cards.  That  position  was  one  of  very 
general  disapproval  of  these  forms  of  social  con- 
duct. In  a  like  spirit  of  faithfulness,  to  report 
rather  than  to  judge  the  state  of  things  in  these 
communities  to-day,  it  has  to  be  said  that  the 
attitude  now  taken  again  shows  a  marked  change. 
Certain  forms  of  social  enjoyment,  now  looked 
upon  with  allowance,  were,  indeed,  frowned  upon 


192  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

at  all  previous  periods  of  our  religious  history. 
But  there  has  been  a  manifest  reversion,  in  some 
particulars,  to  views  and  conduct  respecting  these 
things,  characteristic  of  times  now  more  than  a 
century  gone.  In  almost  all  considerable  towns 
the  theater  is  a  part  of  the  generally  adopted 
appliances  of  public  amusement,  and  is  largely 
attended  by  members  of  evangelical  churches, 
especially  Episcopal  and  Congregational  churches. 
In  these  two  denominations,  certainly,  the  prac- 
tice of  card  playing  is  common  in  all  our  larger 
communities;  and  participation  in  what  the  fath- 
ers used  to  call  "mixed  dancing"  is  equally  so; 
while  the  social  use  of  wine  and  spirits  on  wed- 
ding, and  even  on  ordinary  festive,  occasions  is 
not  infrequent,  and  is  plainly  becoming  more 
common. 

But,  while  there  has  been  this  distinct  alteration 
of  standard  as  to  what  is  regarded  as  allowable  in 
Christian  practice,  there  has  been,  also,  as  a 
feature  of  the  period  under  present  consideration, 
a  large  and  increasing  extension  of  what  is  regarded 
as  obligatory  in  Christian  activity.  The  sense  of 
duty  to  do  something,  in  some  way,  as  Christians, 
has  certainly  been  on  the  advance.  It  has  already 
been  mentioned  that  one  of  the  first  characteristics 
of  the  current  era  of  religious  affairs  is  its  ten- 
dency to  organization  for  combined  effort.  It 
should  be  added  that  organizations  formed  for 
Christian  labor  are  not  merely  existent;  they  are 
employed.      To   a  very   great    and    commendable 


USAGES  AND  ACTIVITIES.  193 

extent,  Christian  people  use  these  agencies  for  the 
purposes  for  which  they  were  devised.  The  mem- 
bers of  our  churches,  in  large  measure,  deem  it 
obligatory  on  them  to  come  into  personal  connec- 
tion with  one  or  more,  or  many,  such  instrumen- 
talities of  endeavor  for  others,  for  the  Church,  and 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God,  putting  into  them  time 
and  money  and  individual  effort.  Especially  is 
this  the  case  with  the  younger  portion  of  the  mem- 
bership of  our  churches,  and  in  relation  to  forms  of 
missionary  and  humanitarian  endeavor  almost  num- 
berless. Very  few  of  those  associated  in  the  Chris- 
tian fellowship  —  even  of  those  more  fashionable 
circles  of  society  where  conceptions  of  the  allow- 
ableness  of  social  practices  alluded  to  in  the  pre- 
ceding paragraph  most  strongly  prevail  —  deem  it 
a  becoming  thing  not  to  identify  themselves  in 
considerable  measure  with  some  form  or  other  of 
distinct  effort  for  the  good  of  men. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  fact,  there  is,  unques- 
tionably, at  the  present  time  a  much  greater  variety 
and  amount  of  Christian  work  —  work  which  is  the 
legitimate  fruit  of  the  Gospel  in  human  hearts  — 
in  process  and  accomplishment  every  day  among 
us  than  there  ever  was  before.  Energies  at  some 
former  times  pent  up  or  paralyzed  for  want  of 
channels  of  employment,  or  for  want  of  intelligent 
understanding  of  objects  to  be  pursued,  are  unlim- 
bered  and  set  in  action  on  every  side.  Time  once 
used  in  introspection  and  solitary  thought  is  now,  in 
very  considerable  degree  at  least,  used  in  labor  for 

13 


194  THE  CURRENT  PERIOD. 

others.  Money  is  inc]'easingly  looked  upon  as  an 
instrument  whose  best  use  is  to  do  good  with.  A 
conception  of  stewardship  for  what  is  intrusted  to 
men  is,  on  the  whole,  growing  in  the  Church,  and 
is  developing  in  the  young.  And  if  there  is  occa- 
sion to  deprecate  the  existence  of  great  fortunes 
gathered  selfishly  and  used  only  for  ostentatious, 
vulgar,  and  selfish  ends,  there  are  also  frequent  and 
splendid  exhibitions  of  wealth  used  for  the  noblest 
and  most  Christian  purposes;  and  of  the  best  social 
positions  and  highest  intellectual  and  moral  advan- 
tages made  tributary  to  the  lowliest  and  most 
arduous  Christian  service. 

It  will,  perhaps,  be  noticed,  in  concluding  this 
survey  of  the  passing  period  of  religious  story 
in  the  land  planted  by  Pilgrims  and  Puritans,  that 
no  effort  has  been  made,  as  one  feature  after 
another  of  it  has  been  mentioned,  to  pronounce 
upon  it  as  better  or  worse  than  what  has  gone 
before.  For  example,  no  verdict  has  been  attempted 
upon  the  wisdom  or  unwisdom  of  the  changed 
conceptions  which  are  seen  to  be  entertained  in 
more  recent  days,  respecting  the  lowered  condi- 
tions of  entrance  into  church  relationship ;  upon  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  the  diminished  sense  of  human 
guilt  and  danger;  upon  the  growing  outwardness  of 
religious  experience ;  upon  the  decay  of  interest  in 
doctrinal  truth ;  upon  the  altered  attitude  respect- 
ing amusements,  or  upon  various  other  matters 
which  have  been  mentioned.  The  neglect  to 
attempt  such  a  verdict  has  been  intentional,  yet 


THE  PRESENT  NOT  FINAL.  195 

not  because,  respecting  some  of  these  things,  at 
least,  a  tolerably  accurate  and  positive  opinion 
could  not  easily  be  expressed.  Such  an  opinion  as 
to  the  relative  worth  of  moral  values  in  things  as 
they  are  and  things  as  they  have  sometimes  been,  it 
is  doubtless  the  duty  of  a  Christian  pastor  to  have 
in  the  administration  of  his  charge ;  it  would  be 
well  for  every  Christian  parent  to  have  in  the 
guidance  of  his  household;  it  would  be  advanta- 
geous for  every  private  Christian  to  have  for  his 
own  benefit  and  direction.  But  the  sufficing  reason 
for  declining,  in  a  survey  like  the  present,  to  at- 
tempt a  point-to-point  verdict  on  the  changes  which 
have  taken  place,  is  that  things  as  they  are  can- 
not be  looked  upon  as  in  any  wise  final.  If  any- 
thing is  taught  by  a  survey  of  the  conditions  of  the 
religious  life  of  New  England  for  two  hundred  and 
seventy  years,  it  is  that  every  condition  is  but 
temporary.  The  course  of  religious  affairs  has  not 
been  regular,  continuous,  accumulative  from  gener- 
ation to  generation ;  but  cyclic,  often  reversionary, 
progressive  only  by  fits  and  starts,  or,  rather,  it 
is  at  once  more  truthful  and  reverent  to  say,  by 
the  occasional,  incalculable,  sovereignly  operative 
energies  of  the  Spirit  of  God  moving  on  the  souls 
of  men.  So,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  it 
will  be  in  the  future.  And  therefore,  from  the 
historical  student's  point  of  view,  it  is  compara- 
tively unimportant  to  decide,  respecting  any  given 
moment  of  religious  history,  upon  its  value  as  com- 
pared with  another  moment  a  decade  or  a  century 


196  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

before ;  for  the  lesson  of  the  past  teaches  him  that 
that  earlier  moment,  in  its  more  essential  qualities, 
will,  in  all  probability,  return.  Modified,  indeed,  as 
to  its  more  exterior  aspects  and  conditions  by  the 
necessary  accumulations  and  inheritances  of  time,  in 
its  central  and  distinctive  spiritual  significance  it 
will  come  again,  and  its  dominating  characteristics 
will  again  give  quality  to  the  period  of  its  sway. 
Not  but  that,  as  has  already  been  intimated,  formal 
differences,  and  differences  of  proportion  and  de- 
gree, will  always  put  contrasts  between  eras  cen- 
trally most  resemblant.  History  repeats  itself, 
but  does  not  repeat  itself  exactly. 

For  example,  —  to  use  perhaps  the  extremest 
illustration  our  survey  can  suggest,  —  should  a 
revived  sense  of  the  inwardness  of  the  religious 
life  be  awakened,  as  it  is  quite  possible  it  may  be 
awakened  in  individuals  and  communities,  it  would 
not  be  reasonable  to  expect  it  to  take  a  form  of 
such  narrowness  and  intensity  as  it  did  oftentimes 
in  the  past.  The  manifold  forms  of  modern  activ- 
ity have  cultivated  to  so  great  an  extent  the  out- 
ward side  of  piety,  and  have  brought  into  existence 
so  many  established  and  necessary  organizations 
and  instrumentalities  of  outgoing  endeavor,  that 
they  cannot  but  hold  in  check  any  too  exclusive 
tendency  to  inwardness  in  religion.  They  must 
needs  have  a  modifying  effect  even  on  the  most 
introspectively  inclined  devotion. 

But,  with  this  qualification  borne  in  mind,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  why  the  characterizing  traits  of  past 


THE  PRESENT  NOT  FINAL.  197 

periods  of  religious  life  among  us  should  not, 
under  these  suggestive  limitations,  repeat  them- 
selves. 

Is  interest  in  doctrinal  religious  truth  now  at  a 
low  ebb  in  our  churches  ?  What  is  to  prevent  its 
revival  again  ?  Not  the  unimportance  of  the  sub- 
ject certainly,  nor  the  debilitation  of  the  New 
England  mind.  Is  the  science  of  theology  less 
inherently  interesting  than  the  science  of  sociology  ? 
Are  the  laws  and  operations  of  that  Divine  Word 
which  pierces  "to  the  dividing  asunder  of  soul  and 
spirit,  and  is  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts  and  in- 
tents of  the  heart,"  less  necessary  to  be  understood 
or  less  momentous  in  results  than  the  operations 
of  the  Roentgen  rays  which  discover  a  buckshot 
lodged  in  the  muscles  of  one's  arm  ?  Only  the  pre- 
occupation and  diversion  of  men's  minds  —  through 
causes  many  of  which  can  easily  be  discerned  — 
prevent  a  return  to  sincere  and  pervasive  inquiry 
into  theological  truth,  —  a  return  which  is  at  no 
time  impossible,  and  of  which  there  are  even  now 
not  wanting  indicative  signs.  Such  a  return,  no 
doubt,  there  will  be.  Again,  under  altered  forms 
suited  to  an  altered  time,  and  in  phrases  harmo- 
nious with  the  altered  form,  will  New  England 
congregations  follow  the  unfoldings  of  God's  great 
plan  of  providence  and  grace  as  interestedly  as 
they  ever  did  in  the  days  of  Edwards  or  Bellamy 
or  Dwight. 

Are  we  told  that  the  conception  of  the  relation- 
ship of  salvation  to  society  has  about  crowded  out 


198  THE   CURRENT  PERIOD. 

the  sense  of  its  relation  to  the  individual,  and 
that  the  feeling  of  personal  guilt  and  loss  has  about 
vanished  from  experience  ?  Those  personal  convic- 
tions will  awake,  will  arise,  will  thrill  and  control 
the  spirits  of  men  in  large  measure  as  they  did 
aforetime.  Over  as  hushed  and  awed  assemblies  as 
ever  listened  to  a  sinner's  cry  will  sound  again  the 
ancient  call,  the  call  of  every  soul  comprehending 
its  own  necessity,  "  Men  and  brethren,  what  must 
I  do  to  be  saved  ?  " 

Have  those  mysterious  breathings  of  spiritual 
energy,  coming  no  one  can  tell  whence,  and  going 
no  one  can  tell  whither,  which  have  in  the  past  of 
our  history  been  the  chief  agent  in  the  conversion 
of  men  and  the  upbuilding  of  the  Church,  now  for 
a  considerable  time  been  largely  absent  from  us  ? 
They  will  return.  God  will  revive  His  work. 
Again  the  still,  small  voice,  mightier  than  the 
whirlwind  or  the  fire,  will  sound  athwart  the  chat- 
terings  of  human  frivolity  and  the  bickerings  of 
politics  and  of  trade;  and  men  will  fall  on  their 
knees,  in  awe  of  an  almost  visible  God,  and  in  the 
trembling  conviction  that  the  one  great  necessity 
of  a  sinful  soul  is  to  become  a  subject  of  His  for- 
giving and  transforming  grace. 

The  proper  attitude  of  a  student  of  religious 
history  is  patience  and  expectancy.  Let  him 
watch.  Let  him  wait.  Let  him  labor  as  best  he 
can  in  his  little  day. 

"  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways." 


THE  PRESENT  NOT  FINAL.  199 

And  He  is  surely  bringing  forward,  though  in 
ways  which  oftentimes  seem  to  His  anxious  and 
toiling  children  to  be  blind,  circuitous,  and  incom- 
prehensible, that  — 

"one  far-off  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves/*  — 

the  Kingdom  of  the  Lord  and  of  His  Christ. 


INDEX. 


Abbot,  Archbishop  George,  16. 
Ability,  natural  and  moral,  132, 

138. 
Activities,  Christian,  170,  171, 

192-194. 
Adams,  Brooks,  79. 
Allen,  Rev.  James,  159. 
American  Board,  155. 
Andover  Seminary,  155,  160. 
Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  53. 
Anthology,  the    Monthly,  160, 

161. 
Anxious  Seat,  148. 
Arminianism,  14,  122,  123. 
Articles,  the    Thirty-nine,    14, 

17;  the  Lambeth,  15. 
Awakening,  see  Revival. 

Bangor  Seminary,  155. 

Baptist  Missionary  Union, 
155. 

Baptists,  intolerance  toward, 
58,  59;  church  in  Boston,  59; 
missions,  153-155;  theologi- 
cal seminary,  155. 

Beecher,  Rev.  Lyman,  148, 163, 
179. 

Belcher,  Gov.  Jonathan,  88. 

Bellamy,  Rev.  Joseph,  of  Beth- 


lehem, Conn.,  as  a  preacher, 
103;  theologian,  110,  130; 
opposes  Half-way  Covenant, 
120. 

Benevolence,  doctrine  of  Ed- 
wardeans,  131,  132,  139,  141, 
144. 

Berkshire  Divinity,  133. 

Bible  Societies,  154. 

Board,  American,  see  Ameri- 
can Board. 

Bradford,  Major  John,  51. 

Bradford,  Lieut.  Samuel,  51. 

Bradford,  Gov.  William,  41,  51. 

Bradford,  Major  William,  51. 

Bradstreet,  Gov.  Simon,  50. 

Brattle  Street  Church,  78,  79, 
160. 

Brewster,  Elder  William,  163. 

Brian t.  Rev.  Lemuel,  of  Quincy, 
Mass.,  Ill,  127. 

Brown,  Rev.  Clark,  of  Brim- 
field,  Mass.,  Ill,  125,  127. 

Buckminster,  Rev.  Joseph  S., 
160. 

Bulkley,  Edward,  quoted,  41. 

Bulkley,  Rev.  Peter,  38. 

Bundling,  Ib-ll. 

Burchard,  Rev.  Jedediah,  147. 


202 


INDEX. 


Bushnell,  Rev.  Horace,  177. 
Butler,  Bishop  Joseph,  152. 

Calvinism,  in  England  un- 
der Elizabeth,  14 ;  influences 
founders  of  N.  E.,  15-17. 

Calvinists,  "Consistent,"  134. 

Card-playing,  191,  192. 

Cartwright,  Thomas,  influence 
on  founders  of  N.  E.,  15. 

Channing,  Rev.  William  E., 
Ill,  160,  162. 

Charles  I.,  tries  to  check  Cal- 
vinistic  preaching,  17. 

Chauncy,  Rev.  Charles,  of  Bos- 
ton, on  Great  Awakening,  98, 
99;  theologian,  111,  125,  127. 

Chautauqua  Circle,  171. 

Christian  Endeavor  Society, 
170. 

Church,  present  conceptions  of, 
180-183  ;  '<  Institutional," 
181. 

Church-membership, conditions 
of,  29,  30,  61-63,  78-80,173- 
175 ;  how  valued,  182,  183. 

Clap,  Pres.  Thomas,  of  Yale, 
Old-Calvinist,  111,  125. 

Codman,  Rev.  John,  161. 

Cole,  Nathan,  account  of  White- 
field's  preaching,  89-92. 

Colman,  Rev.  Benjamin,  79. 

Connecticut  Evangelical  Maga- 
zine, see  Evangelical. 

Connecticut  General  Associa- 
tion, missions,  153.  • 

Connecticut  Missionary  Society, 
153. 

Consistent-Calvinists,  see  Cal- 
vinists. 


Cooley,  Rev.  Timothy  M.,  147. 

Cooper,  Rev.  William,  79,  85. 

Cotton,  Rev.  John,  of  Boston, 
Calvinism  of,  16;  Hutchin- 
son dispute,  38 ;  versifier,  41 ; 
see  also  159,  163. 

Covenant,  Half- Way,  see  Half- 
Way  Covenant. 

Currency,  colonial  experiments 
in,  55,  56. 

Damnation,  contentment  in, 
see  Hopkinsianism,  and  Will- 
ingness to  be  lost. 

Dancing,  157,  158,  191,  192. 

Danforth,  Rev.  Samuel,  of 
Roxbury,  Mass.,  quoted,  67- 
69. 

Danforth,  Rev.  Samuel,  of 
Taunton, Mass.,  quoted,  83, 84. 

Danger  of  sinners,  sense  of,  at 
present,  175-177. 

Davenport,  Rev.  James,  95, 102. 

Davenport,  Rev.  John,  of  New 
Haven  and  Boston,  38,  159. 

Dedham  Decision,  162. 

Deerfield,  assault  on,  54. 

Diphtheria,  epidemics,  56. 

Divine  Sovereignty,  see  Sover- 
eignty. 

Dixwell,  John,  regicide,  53. 

Doctrine,  present  lack  of  inter- 
est in,  177,  178  ;  will  revive, 
197. 

Drown,  Rev.  Samuel,  Separa- 
tist, 117. 

Dunster,  Pres.  Henry,  59. 

D wight,  Pres.  Timothy,  theolo- 
gian, 110,  125  ;  modification 
of  Edwardeanism,  150,  151. 


INDEX. 


203 


Dyer,   Mary,   Quaker    martyr, 

57,58. 

Earthquakes,  56,  84 ;  reli- 
gious results  of,  84,  85. 

Education,  Puritan  care  for, 
48,  49  ;  decline  in,  50,  51. 

Edwardeanisin,  outlined,  130- 
133  ;  in  Evangelical  Reawak- 
ening, 134,  136,  155,  160; 
its  missionary  spirit,  154, 
155  ;  see  also  110. 

Edwards,  Rev.  Jonathan,  on 
"  bundling,"  76  ;  revival  in 
Northampton,  85,  86,  101; 
on  extravagances  of  the 
Great  Awakening,  94,  99; 
as  a  preacher,  103  ;  on  physi- 
cal phenomena,  104,  105  ;  on 
guilt  of  sin,  107,  108,  119; 
theologian,  110,  130;  his 
hopes  of  the  revival,  112, 124; 
opposes  half-way  covenant, 
120;  opposes  Arminianism, 
122;  interest  in  missions, 
154;   see  also  73,  150,  177. 

Edwards,  Rev.  Jonathan,  the 
younger,  36,  110. 

Edwards,  Mrs.  Sarah,  104,  105; 
on  willingness  to  be  lost,  109, 
143. 

Edwards.  Rev.  Timothy,  73. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  159. 

Emerson,  Kev.  William,  quoted, 
159. 

Emmons.  Wev.  Nathanael,  of 
Franklin.  Mass.,  theologian, 
110;  on  "means,"  132,133  ; 
on  willingness  to  be  lost, 
143  ;  revival  measures,  148. 


Episcopacy,  introduced  into 
N.  E.,  60 ;  its  view  of  church 
membership,  175. 

Episcopius,  Prof.  Simon,  16. 

Epworth  League,  170. 

Evangelical  Magazine,  Connec- 
ticut, founded,  153;  quoted, 
136-138,  142,  144,  145. 

Evangelists,  in  Great  Awak- 
ening, 95,  103 ;  repressed, 
111 ;  in  later  revivals,  135, 
147-149;  in  present  period, 
189-191. 

Exhorters,  96,  103,  111,  123, 
147. 

Experience,  narratives  of  spir- 
itual, see  Relations. 

Externalism,  see  Outwardness. 

Finney,  Pres.  Charles  G.,  evan- 
gelistic labors, 147,  148  ;  Hop- 
kinsian  preaching,  149. 

Firmin,  Giles,  27,  29. 

Four  days'  meetings,  148. 

Foxcroft,  Rev.  Thomas,  159. 

GiLLET, Rev.  Alexander,  quoted, 
136. 

Goffe,  William,  regicide,  53. 

Gordon,  Rev.  George  A.,  ref- 
erence to  a  volume  by, 
186. 

Graves,  Rev.  Increase,  quoted, 
137. 

Griffin,  Rev.  Edward  Dorr, 
on  submission,  144,  145 ; 
preacher,  147,  179  ;  at  Bos- 
ton, 161. 

Guyse,  Rev.  John,  86. 


204 


INDEX. 


Half-way  Covenant,  nature 
and  effects,  61-63  ;  opposed, 
113,  120,  125;  abandoned, 
156,  157,  174. 

Hal],  Rev.  Gordon,  quoted,  144. 

Hallock,  Rev.  Jeremiah,  quoted, 
138,  145;  revival  preacher, 
147. 

Hart,  Rev.  William,  of  Say- 
brook,  Conn.,  Ill,  150,  151. 

Hartford  North  Association, 
on  revivalistic  extravagances, 
99 ;  opposes  Methodism,  122. 

Hartford  Seminary,  formerly 
East  Windsor,  155,  156. 

Harvard  College,  45,  48,  59; 
and  Whitefield,  95,  100; 
Unitarian  control,  159,  160. 

Helplessness  of  man,  doctrine 
of,  22-29,  64,  128,  132,  139. 

Hemmenway,  Rev.  Moses,  of 
Wells,  Me.,  Ill,  125,  150, 
151;  on  use  of  "means," 
129. 

Higginson,  Rev.  Francis,  44. 

Higginson,  Rev.  John,  quoted, 
44-46. 

Hooker,  Rev.  Thomas,  of  Hart- 
ford, Conn.,  Calvinism  of, 
16 ;  on  human  helplessness, 
24 ;  on  willingness  to  be  lost, 
27-29,  108,  109,  143;  on 
church-membership,  61 ;  on 
guilt  of  sin,  106,  107  ;  death, 
32  ;  books  reprinted,  106. 

Hopkins,  Rev.  Samuel,  antici- 
pated, 28;  on  willingness  to 
be  lost,  109 ;  theological 
system,  110,  130-133;  on 
"means,"    132:     controver- 


sies, 150,  151  ;  influence, 
152,  153;  interest  in  mis- 
sions, 155. 

Hopkinsianism,  109;  before 
Hopkins,  27-29;  dominates 
Evangelical  Reawakening, 
134,  136,  155,  160 ;  opposes 
New  Haven  views,  152 ;  see 
also  Willingness  to  be  lost. 

Hopkinsians,  133. 

Hosmer,  Rev.  Stephen,  election 
sermon,  74. 

Hubbard,  Rev.  William,  quoted, 
45,  46. 

Huntington,  Rev.  Joshua,  160. 

Hutchinson,  Mrs.  Anne,  on 
authoritv  of  Scripture,  37- 
39,  186." 

Indians,  evangelized,  33. 
Intolerance,   in    early    N.    E., 

57,  59,  66  ;  toward  itinerants 

and    Separatists,    111,    115, 

116. 
Introspectiveness,  29,  30,  172, 

196. 

James   I.,  opposes    Calvinistic 

preaching,  16. 
Johnson,  Edward,  cited,  41. 
Josselyn,  John,  cited,  41. 

Kelke,  Roger,   English    Puri- 
tan, 14. 
King's  Daughters,  170. 
Kirk,  Rev.  Edward  N.,  147. 
Knapp,  Rev.  Jacob,  147. 

Lambeth  Articles,  see  Arti- 
cles. 


INDEX. 


205 


Land,  desire  to  obtain,  51,  52. 
Lee,     Rev.    Jesse,     Methodist 

founder,  121. 
Licentiousness,  in  early  N.  E., 

75-77. 
Luxury,  168. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  49. 

Massachusetts  Missionary  Mag- 
azine, 154,  160. 

Massachusetts  Missionary  So- 
ciety, 154. 

Mather,  Rev.  Cotton,  28,  50. 

Mather,  Rev.  Increase,  28, 
163  ;  quoted,  69,  70. 

Mather,  Rev.  Moses,  of  Darien, 
Conn.,  151. 

Mather,  Rev.  Richard,  of  Dor- 
chester, Mass.,  16. 

Mather,  Rev.  Samuel,  quoted, 
72,  80. 

Mayhew,  Rev.  Experience,  of 
Martha's  Vineyard,  HI. 

Mayhew,  Rev.  Jonathan,  of 
Boston,  111,  127. 

"  Means  "  of  conversion,  64, 
128,  129,  131-133,  141,  142, 
150. 

Methodism  in  N.  E.,  121-124 ; 
missions,  155. 

Mills,  Rev.  Jedidiah,  of  Hunt- 
ington, Conn.,  103. 

;Mills,  Rev.  Samuel  J.,  145. 

Ministry,  education  of,  in  early 
N".  E.,  50;  converted  or  un- 
converted, 94,  99,  102. 

Missionary  Societies,  153-155. 

Nettleton,  Rev.  Asahel,  147, 
148. 


New-Divinity,  see  Edwardean- 
ism. 

New  England  Theology,  see 
Edwardeanism. 

New  Haven  Seminary,  —  Yale 
Divinity  School,  155,  156. 

New  Haven  Theology,  151, 
152,  156. 

Newton  Theological  Institu- 
tion, 155. 

Niles,  Rev.  Samuel,  119. 

Norton,  Rev.  John,  on  Divine 
sovereignty,  18-20  ;  his  "  Or- 
thodox Evangelist  "  quoted, 
19,  20,  23  ;  on  human  help- 
lessness, 23,  26;  on  willing- 
ness to  be  lost,  29;  answers 
Pyuchon,  37,  177  ;  also  159. 

Old-Calvinists,  111,  155,  159, 
160,  163,  177;  views  of,  128, 
129  ;  on  sin,  131  ;  revival  of, 
150,  151. 

Organization,  characteristic  of 
present  age,  170,  171 ;  used, 
192-194. 

Outwardness,  of  religious  life, 
171-173. 

Paine,  Rev.  Elisha,  116. 

Panoplist,  The,  161. 

Park,  Prof.  Edwards  A.,  177. 

Park  Street  Church,  160,  161. 

Parker,  Rev.  Theodore,  162. 

Parsons,  Rev.  Jonathan,  of 
Lyme,  Conn.,  103. 

Pensions,  168,  169. 

Perkins,  William,  English  Pu- 
ritan, 15,  105. 


206 


INDEX, 


Peter,  Rev.  Hugh,  quoted,  77. 

Philip's  War,  53,  84. 

Phillips,  Rev.  Samuel,  of  An- 
dover,  Mass.,  Ill,  150  ;  on 
"  means,"  129. 

Physical  phenomena  in  revi- 
vals, 93,  94,  96-101, 103-105, 
135. 

Pilkington,  Bishop  James,  14. 

Pilkington,  Leonard,  English 
Calvinist,  14. 

Pomeroy,  Rev.  Benjamin,  of 
Hebron,  Conn.,  103. 

Porter,  Rev.  Eliphalet,  161. 

Prayer,  when  sinful,  141,  142, 
149,  150. 

Preaching,  present  character 
of,  178-183. 

Prince,  Rev.  Thomas,  85. 

Punishments,  Puritans  not  se- 
vere, 40. 

Puritans,  neither  gloomy  nor 
hard,  39-42. 

Pynchon,  William,  volume  on 
the  atonement,  36,  37,  177. 

Quakers,  on  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture, 37,  39;  persecuted,  57, 

58. 

Red  Cross  Society,  170. 

Reformation,  character  and 
results  of  English,  12,  13. 

"  Reforming  Synod,"  see  Sy- 
nod. 

"  Relations  "  of  experience,  29, 
30,  78-80. 

Responsibility,  personal,  13. 

Revivals,  at  Taunton  in  1704, 
83,  84 ;  consequent  on  earth- 


quake, 84,  85;  in  Northamp- 
ton under  Stoddard  and 
Edwards,  84-86 ;  elsewhere  in 
1734-36,  86. —The  "Great 
Awakening"  of  1740-42, 
87-101 ;  its  physical  phenom- 
ena, 93,  94,  96-101, 103-105; 
its  evangelists  and  exhort- 
ers,  95,  96;  its  effect  on 
preaching,  102,103;  on  expe- 
rience, 105-110 ;  on  doctrine, 
110,  111;  its  results,  124, 
125;  political  repression,  111; 
the  "Separatists,"  112-121. 
—  Revival  of  1797-1801, 
character,  134,  135;  doc- 
trines emphasized,  136-145; 
results,  146.  —  Revivals  from 
1805  to  1859,  146;  modifica- 
tion in  doctrine,  148-152; 
results,  153-158.  —Will  re- 
turn, 198. 

Robbins,  Rev.  Ammi,  quoted, 
138. 

Robinson,  Rev.  John,  Calvin- 
ism of,  16. 

Robinson,     William,      Quaker 
martyr,  57,  58. 

Rogers,  Rev.  John,  of  Dedham, 
Eng.,  105. 

Russell,  Rev.  William,  election 
sermon,  74. 

Salem  Bible  Society.  155. 

Salvation  Army,  170. 

Satan,   belief    in    his   agency, 

31-33. 
Schools,  in  early  N.  E.,48,  49. 
Scripture,  early  translations  of, 

12;  authority  ascribed  to  in 


INDEX. 


207 


early  N.  E.,  33-39;  criticism 
of,  resented,  37-39;  present 
changing  attitude  toward, 
184-189. 

Self-love,  a  motive  in  conver- 
sion, 151,  152,  156. 

Separatism,  story  of,  112-121, 
135. 

Sewall,  Rev.  Joseph,  85. 

Shepard,  Rev.  Samuel,  quoted, 
137. 

Shepherd,  Rev.  Thomas,  of 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  Calvinism 
of,  16;  on  human  helpless- 
ness, 23 ;  few  to  be  saved,  25; 
salvation  difficult,  26 ;  on  wil- 
hngness  to  be  lost,  27,  28, 108, 
143;  "relations,"  30;  books 
by,  reprinted,  106;  also  131. 

Simon,  Rev.  James,  119. 

Sin,  how  presented  by  Hooker 
and  by  Edwards,  106-108; 
how  viewed  by  Edwardeans, 
131-133.  —  Sense  of,  in  Evan- 
gelical Reawakening,  139- 
141;  at  present,  173-177; 
will  revive,  198. 

Slavery,  155,  165. 

Smalley,  Rev.  John,  of  New 
Britain,  Conn.,  130. 

Small-pox,  56. 

Smith,  Reuben,  158. 

Social  Usages,  modified  by 
Evangelical  Reawakening, 
157,  158;  in  modern  period, 
191,  192. 

Sociology,  181,  182. 

Solomon's  Song,  34,  35. 

Sovereignty  of  God,  doctrine 
in    early  N.    E.,   18-22;    in 


Evangelical  Reawakening, 
130,  137-145. 

Sparks,  Rev.  Jared,  162. 

Stevenson,  Marmaduke,  Quaker 
martyr,  57,  58. 

Stiles,  Pres.  Ezra,  155. 

Stiles,  Dr.  H.  R.,  77. 

Stoddard,  Rev.  Solomon,  on 
Lord's  Supper,  64,  86 ;  re- 
vivals under,  84. 

Stone,  Rev.  Samuel,  verses  on, 
41. 

Stoughton,  Rev.  and  Lieut. - 
Gov.  William,  election  ser- 
mon, 66,   67. 

Strong,  Rev.  Nathan,  as  re- 
vival preacher,  147;  as  dis- 
tiller, 157,   158. 

Submission  to  divine  will,  26- 
29,  108,  109,  131-133,  142- 
145. 

Success,  eagerness  for,  167, 
168. 

Synod  of  1637,  38;  "  Reform- 
ing," 47,  59. 

Tappan,  Prof.  David,  160. 
Taylor,    Prof.    Nathaniel   W., 

views,  151,  152,  156. 
Tennent,  Rev.  Gilbert,  95,  102, 

105. 
Theological     Seminaries,     155, 

156. 
Throop,     Rev.    Benjamin,     of 

Bozrah,  Conn.,  112. 
Toleration,  see  Intolerance. 
Torrey,  Rev.  Samuel,  election 

sermon,  70,  71. 
Tract  Society,  154. 
Tyndale,  William,  12. 


208 


INDEX. 


Unitariaxism,  antecedents  of, 
111,  112,  127;  development 
of,  158-163;  alleged  approxi- 
mation to,  183,  184. 

Universalism,  in  Congrega- 
tional churches,  176,  177. 

University  extension,  171. 

*' Unregenerate  Doings,"  141, 
142,  150. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  50. 

Wallet,  Rev.  Thomas,  of 
Barnstable,  Mass.,  election 
sermon,  67. 

War,  King  Philip's,  see  Philip. 

War  of  the  Rebellion,  165-169. 

Ward,  Rev.  Nathaniel,  27. 

Ware,  Prof.  Henry,  111,  160. 

Watts,  Hannah,  quoted,  119. 

Watts,  Rev.  Isaac,  86. 

Wealth  in  present  period,  168, 
193,  194. 

Webb,  Rev.  John,  85. 

Webster,  Rev.  Samuel,  of  Sal- 
isbury, Mass.,  Ill,  127. 

West.  Rev.  Stephen,  of  Stock- 
bridge,  Mass.,  130,  151. 

Whalley,  Edward,  regicide,  53. 

Wheelock,  Rev.  Eleazar,  of 
Lebanon,  Conn.,  103. 

Whitefield,  Rev.  George,  tour 
of  N.  E.,  87,  88;  his  preach- 
ing, 89-92;  its  effects,  102, 
103 ;  his  merits,  92,  93  ;  his 
less  attractive  side,  93-95; 
opposition  to,  100. 


Whitgift,  Archbishop  John, 
15,  16. 

Whiting,  Rev.  Samuel,  84. 

Whitman,  Rev.  Samuel,  elec- 
tion sermon,  73. 

Willard,  Rev.  Samuel,  71,  72, 
177. 

Williams,  Rev.  John,  54. 

Williams,  Rev.  Solomon,  98. 

Willingness  to  be  lost,  27,  28, 
108,  109,  142-145,  149. 

Wilson,  Rev.  John,  of  Boston, 
38. 

Wine,  convivial  use  of,  157, 
158,  191,  192. 

Winthrop,  Gov.  John,  50. 

Winthrop,  Mrs.  Margaret,  40, 
41. 

Witchcraft,  in  early  N.  E.,  32; 
in  Old  and  New  England, 
40;  in  1692-93,  54. 

Wood,  William,  cited,  41. 

Woman's  Christian  Temper- 
ance Union,  170. 

Wycliffe,  John,  12. 

Yale  College,  Episcopacy  in- 
vades, 60;  Whitefield  judges 
unfavorably,  95;  testifies 
against  him,  100 ;  Edward- 
eanism  of,  133;  Pres.  Dwight, 
150;  Prof.  Taylor,  151,  152, 
156;  its  Divinity  School,  155, 
156. 

Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation, 170. 


